Is Python like VB?

[Joe]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 21:33:36 -0800, "Mike Cox"
<mikecoxlinux at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Where I work we use  Microsoft Office with a lot of customization using
>Visual Basic.  I would like to switch to Python to do it since VB is being
>discontinued.  Would Python meet our requirements? I need to make lots of
>GUI applications (message boxes, forms, etc.) and do the underlying business
>logic too.

I wouldn't advise you to switch to Python from VB if...
1. the installer must be downloaded from the Net, so must be kept as
small as possible (GUI layers like wxWidgets of PyGTK add several
megabytes to your app)
2. you're used to sophisticated GUI designers like VB or Delphi, and
want something as polished
3. you expect an IDE as rich as those two proprietary tools (including
IntelliSense, intigrated GUI designer, compiler, etc.)
4. your app uses third-party components that are not available to
platforms other than VB (or Delphi)

After checking out the tools currently available, I got to the
conclusion that Python is a very fine tool for text-based apps or
moderately-sophisticated GUI apps like BitTorrent.

For more demanding GUI apps, I would advise you stick to VB until the
.Net framework stabilizes and trickles down to being available on 80%
of hosts, at which point you can safely trade horses (VB.Net does
solve some of the oddities of VB Classic.)

In an ideal world, we'd have open-source development tools as rich as
VB or Delphi, but at this point, I haven't found any that doesn't fall
short on any of the points above (probably because the work involved
is underevaluated, and just not doable without a constant and
sufficient revenue stream.)

Just my opinion,
Joe.