Using python as primary language

[Russell E. Owen]

In article <1194508354.226023.232050 at v3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
 Michel Albert <exhuma at gmail.com> wrote:

> In our company we are looking for one language to be used as default
> language. So far Python looks like a good choice (slacking behind
> Java). A few requirements that the language should be able cope with
> are:
> 
> * Database access to Sybase.
>   This seems to be available for python, but the windows-binaries for
> the library
>   are not available. Self-Compiling them proved to be non-trivial (As
> always
>   on windows).
> * Easy GUI creation.
>   Solved using PyQt.
> * Cross Platform (Linux + Windows).
>   Again, PyQt, solves this
> * Easy deployment.
>   Solved using py2exe + innosetup

How do you deploy python on linux? The only solution I know of is 
pyinstaller and I never could get it to work for me on linux (I never 
bothered to try on Windows since I already had py2exe doing what I 
needed).

In my opinion this is one of Python's few weaknesses compared to Java. 
Others that come to mind are:
- Lack of a built-in networking library that works with GUI toolkits 
(use Twisted Framework and hope it continues to be supported)
- Lack of a good built-in GUI toolkit (but there are several good 
alternatives including Qt)

> * Charting (Histograms, Line charts, bar charts, pie charts, ...)
>   I am currently looking into PyQwt, which looks promising.

HippoDraw is very good. I am not familiar with PyQwt so I cannot compare 
them.

-- Russell