Newbie: Crazy, but Quick

[Cliff Wells]

On Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:49:52 -0800
Virginia O wrote:

> Hi all.
> 
> I need to check if I'm heading in the right direction.
> 
> I'm trying to write a 'protype' of a program. I'll give a quick example
of
> what I'm trying to do:
> 
> Say I spend a month training for Speed Skating.
> I open up my Speed Skating Training Buddy Program on my computer. I just
> bought the program and it should be cross-platform compatible, to work on
my
> PC at home and the Mac's at work.
> 
> I enter the date and time and my race times.
> 
> Then I choose the weather conditions for each day. There should already
be a
> DB with all the info, so I don't have to enter each time.
> 
> I would like to hit a button that calculates the correlations between
> weather and my race times.
> ------
> So far, this is what I understand I need to do:
> 
> Build my database. (I will be using Access,unless convinced otherwise.)

Let me try to convince you right now ;)  I've used Access, MySQL,
PostgreSQL, dBase (and maybe a couple of others I can't remember) and
Access is by far the worst database I've ever encountered.  Much of the
problem is in the "documentation", but it also has problems with concurrent
access and corruption.  Plus, it's not really portable (although you
probably won't have much problem between PC's and Macs).  To top it all
off, you have to pay for it, when superior solutions are available for
free.

I'd suggest MySQL for this particular project, since your database
requirements are fairly simple and it's fairly easy to setup and learn
MySQL.  Plus Python support for MySQL has been around for some time and is
well-tested.  There are also good books available if you need them.

> 
> Learn more Python, so I can write the functions necessary to calculate
> correlations. (There would be more than what I've shown here.)
> 
> Setup the Python database module, to be able to access the DB.

You can use either MySQLdb or mxODBC to do this if you use MySQL.

> Then, do I want wxPython, Tkinter or the like to create an interface? I
want
> graphics and all the fancy stuff.....not just a buncha form fields.

wxPython support on the Mac isn't quite up to speed (last I heard - anyone
correct me?) otherwise that would be my recommendation.  Tkinter should
work well on both platforms, but will look like all Tk-based apps: a bit
out-of-place.

> Then I see py2exe helps create the executable program.

Does this work on Mac?  I thought py2exe only worked for Windows and
McMillan's Installer only worked for Windows and Linux (but maybe I'm
wrong?).  Anyway, I don't think this should really be an issue unless
you're going to distribute to a lot of people.

> ---------
> So, am I way out in left field? At this point, I don't want to hire a
> developer. I'll be happy if I can get the works to function in Python,
> before I make it a standalone program.

Good luck with your project.  

BTW, you'd only be crazy if you planned on doing it in C.


-- 
Cliff Wells, Software Engineer
Logiplex Corporation (www.logiplex.net)
(503) 978-6726 x308  (800) 735-0555 x308