Delphi vs Python

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

On 07-Feb-2002 Peter Hansen wrote:
> Bo Vandenberg wrote:
>> 
>> I'm planning learning strategy and I thought I would ask people who use both
>> Python and Delphi their opinion.
> 
> I used Delphi (back in the 3 and 4 days, I think) extensively for several 
> years, and had a lot of respect for the environment and language.  Very
> productive for me, relatively few bugs (compared to C++ and C, roughly
> similar to my levels with Java).
> 

This is mostly a "me too" post.  With the addition of attributes in 2.2 python
now does almost everything syntactically Delphi does.  I do on occasion miss
the 'with' keyword, nice bit of sugar that.

For me what made Delphi nice was how much it abstracted the Window's API away
and the ease of creating GUI apps by putting things where I wanted.  I have yet
to find another environment that made good looking apps that fast.  If I could
have one of those that outputs python code AND was not proprietary I would be
quite happy.  glade is a very pale comparison.

If your goal is to write GUI apps, Delphi may be a good place.  Python is great
as an all around language and it really can churn out code fast.  On top of
that you have the interpreter available to you by just running python without a
script AND it is available to you in your running code (introspection).  Being
able to quickly test an idea by just firing up python is one of the things I
love most.  Hell, I even use it as a desk calculator (whoever made '_' return
the last result -- I love you).