Python -- (just) a successful experiment?

Torsten Bronger bronger at physik.rwth-aachen.de
Mon Aug 8 03:39:01 EDT 2005


Hallöchen!

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:

> [...]  Consider
>
> Hypothesis 1: someone learned Python and Tkinter, felt
> dissatisfied with Tkinter, went searching the universe for an
> alternative, found GTK, and wrote PyGTK, perhaps learning C in the
> process.
>
> Hypothesis 2: a C-programmer who is a satisfied user of GTK (on
> *nix, presumably) learns Python.  "Neat, but I also want to keep
> using GTK."  Which he can because it is relatively easy.
>
> Repeat H1 and H2 for every wrapping.  You believe in H1.  I
> suspect H2 is more often true, but admit I have no data.

It is probably H2 (otherwise the reluctance to learn GTK so
thoroughly would be too great) but with the important addition that
the creator of PyGTK felt the general dissatisfaction with Tkinter.
Getting users is a very very important motivation for a developer
after all.

>>  That by itself says the stdlib is lacking.
>
> I have an alternate interpretation.  There is a Python wrapping
> for as many C libraries as there are because Python is neat and
> wrapping is fairly easy and the rewards great.

Yes, absolutely; but for the core functionality (which must contain
a good GUI toolkit in my opinion) you should have more that just a
"binding".  Instead, it should be well-embedded into the standard
library and the language.

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus



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