Boa Constructor: stable enough for production use?

[Nick Trout]

"Gary Cramblitt" <garycramblitt_NOSPAM at comcast.net> wrote in message
news:pan.2003.02.13.23.10.26.682804 at comcast.net...
> On Sun, 12 Jan 2003 23:48:09 +0100, iwk wrote:
>
> > But of course, this enthousiasm is based upon one day of playing. Can
> > anyone who used Boa Constructor recently to build a more avanced app
> > confirm that Boa is stable enough for "production use"?
>
> > Iwan
>
> Consider that boa itself is developed in Python and (I would assume) boa!

Boa does indeed look like it is written using Boa because of the
autogenerated code in its own GUI.

I am just evaluating it to see if it is stable and feature rich enough to
use in everyday use and I'm pleasently surprised so far. Firstly I'd advise
using the CVS version. Secondly, whatever you do dont fiddle with the bits
marked "autogenerated dont fiddle with this" ;-D Boa stores your edits in
code and parses the source code back to work out what you're building. This
design feature worries me a little but it seems to work so far.

A year or so ago I looked at Boa and passed on it, although now I'd say its
fit to use - but I havent used it for an extensive length of time. I was a
little worried about the "alpha" status of it in SF but I think this is more
due to lacking features than quality of the code. A few widgets aren't
covered, eg. wxStyleTextCtrl, but you can easily add these in code. One
thing that would be nice to have, that is missing from Delphi is the auto
resizing of controls on a resize. I'm currently doing this by hand as I
havent discovered a way to automate this.

I'd say the quality of the code is no worse than an initial Micro$oft
release. I try to avoid using their software for at least a year after
release as I dont see why I should pay to be an alpha and beta tester. This
is free so its different and you can fix bugs and contribute features.

Another alternative is PythonCard but I'd say Boa is more advanced.

Regards,
Nick