Q: The roles of Python

[Carl Waldbieser]

It seems obvious to me how Python can be extremely useful on the server side
of a distributed application, but I was wondering if it has been widely used
on the client side of such applications or in desktop applications in
general.  Are there some good articles on the issues associated with using
Python in this way?  If you wrote a desktop application in Python, are there
any examples of how you would distribute Python with your application?  How
transparent would (or could?) the process be to the end user?

I think Python offers a lot of advantages over the other two big choices in
the Windows scripting world (JScript and VBScript), notably the fact that it
seems a lot easier to organize Python scripts into discrete modules.  It has
been my experience that in big applications, the other scripting engines I
have used tend to have problems with colliding names, and information tends
to be passed between scripts using global variables.  The net result is that
they tend to get very messy and hard to debug very quickly.

I think that Python scripts could be a lot easier to manage than other
scripting enviornments, but I have not heard much about Python being used
much behind the scenes in desktop scenarios.

Also, I would be very interested in hearing about client-side and desktop
applications where the application was written primarily in Python rather
than simply being the scripting engine.

Thanks for any insights and information in advance!

Carl Waldbieser
waldbie at attglobal.net