Can Python replace Visual Basic? Should it?

[Alex Martelli]

"J.J. Dukarm" <jdukarm at hydracen.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.983910669.7085.python-list at python.org...
    [snip]
> The three biggest problems for me were: (a) finding a suitable GUI (I
chose
> wxPython); (b) finding a robust way to communicate with commercial
database
> products (I am experimenting with various ways of doing ODBC, but am still
> nervous); and (c) packaging the app for distribution (just started
figuring
> it out).

For (c), look at both py2exe (simpler) and McMillan's Installer (richer).

For (b), do have a look at ADO.  Yes, I know you want to get free from
Microsoft, but COM is what they generally do _right_, and ADO/OLEDb is
really a very good architecture; you generally get a choice of OLEDb
providers when talking via ADO to any database (e.g., for Oracle, there
are providers made by Oracle and others made by Microsoft, plus, you
CAN fall back to the generic provider which dresses up ODBC as OLEDb
as a last-ditch measure, but you generally won't need to) and get good
performance AND flexible programming.

The only real minus is that it will still tie you to Windows, where
all of the rest of your choices might let you sell a Linux version
too.  You might work around that by doing a DB-API compliant wrapper
on top of ADO (something I've long thought about).  But I guess that
if portability is crucial, then Lemburg's mxODBC is probably your
best bet, particularly now that it's "gone commercial".


Alex