Gui Advice Needed: wxPython or PyQT ?

[David Bolen]

Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:

> True: if everybody in your development shop is involved in developing
> GUI's, this is indeed steeper.  I forgot what big savings we have by
> having all GUI development done by a small specialized team while most
> developers work exclusively on the middleware, backend, web stuff, &c.
> That's how most firms I've worked in or with are organized, so I forgot
> that such specialization is probably the exception, not the rule.

Maybe we're just unlucky that way :-) We have specialization today
(although I'm trying to actually move further away from that with some
XP practices), but we also have fairly distinct system components that
have independent UIs.  For example, our embedded hardware platform,
the main end-user product, internal tools developed for our support
groups, and custom tools developed for business partners.  Carving the
UI out of all components to assign to a UI team doesn't fit all that
well, at least not to this point.

> Besides, I'm clearly not current -- I _thought_ the licenses where
> $1500 per developer, not $2000.

I should have mentioned that I was working on the enterprise edition
(the pro is in fact around $1300/per at the 6+ mark), since we'd we'd
need QTable (although not really the rest of enterprise).

> It seems to me that the contrary applies -- a bigger shop, if there
> is no site licensing (and always assuming no specialization), would
> end up paying way more, in proportion.

I guess I was figuring that while in absolute terms a larger shop
would pay more, they would have a better chance of it being a smaller
percentage of the overall development budget and/or there would be
better odds that only a percentage of the team would need GUI
development.

> 1.0beta4 was put out very recently, and the support mailing list was
> quite prompt in addressing my issue (although nothing happened to
> SOLVE them, mind you:-).  But I don't understand your concerns.  By
> signing up while it's still beta you get a DIRT-cheap license -- WAY
> cheaper than trolltech's -- to redistribute Python-only PyQt apps;
> why do you care if they take one month or 12 to get out of beta?  As
> your license is valid for one year until AFTER they get out of beta
> it would seem any delay in their doing so is to your advantage...;-).

Assuming they ever get out of beta.  My primary concern is that the
product never reaches a release stage and ends up being stillborn, in
which case I'm leery of committing a development team to using it for
a new development project.  I realized there was a December Beta
release, but I didn't get the warm fuzzies when the FAQ on the site
doesn't seem to be updated (still talking about needing 2.0 versus 2.2
referenced the main page, and still talking about months for the beta
when it's been far longer than that).  Just little things here and
there that make you go "hmmm" when evaluating, so I was curious as to
your experience.

-- David