questions from a lost sheep

Joe Strout joe at strout.net
Thu Oct 2 15:22:23 EDT 2008


Hi all,

I used to by a big Python fan, many years ago [1].  I stopped using it  
after discovering REALbasic, because my main developmental need is to  
write desktop applications that are as native as possible on each  
platform, and because I really like a strongly-typed language with a  
good IDE.  At the time (circa 2000), Python just didn't cut the  
mustard in this regard.  (Indeed, none of the standard cross-platform  
C libraries -- Tk, QT, wxWidgets -- worked worth a darn on the Mac, at  
least at that time.)

But REALbasic is a commercial, closed-source project with a small  
development team, and I find myself consistently frustrated by quality  
issues (read "bugs").  I've started to think fondly of the rock-solid  
stability of Python, and have been wondering if perhaps aggressive  
unit testing could mitigate most of the problems of weak typing.

But that still leaves the other issue: creating high-quality desktop  
apps that look and feel just as good to users as anything written in  
the "standard" tools for each platform (Cocoa, .NET, etc.).  REALbasic  
still does a great job of that (when it works at all).  What's the  
state of the art in desktop app development in Python these days?

Also, apart from simply searching with Google, is there anyplace I  
could go to find a good Python contractor to build a cross-platform  
desktop app demo?

Many thanks,
- Joe

[1] http://www.strout.net/info/coding/python/





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