Considering migrating to Python from Visual Basic 6 for engineering applications
sohcahtoa82 at gmail.com
sohcahtoa82 at gmail.com
Wed Feb 17 15:25:51 EST 2016
On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 11:49:44 AM UTC-8, wrong.a... at gmail.com wrote:
> I am mostly getting positive feedback for Python.
Good!
>
> It seems Python is used more for web based applications. Is it equally fine for creating stand-alone *.exe's? Can the same code be compiled to run on Linux or Android or web-based?
Python is not traditionally compiled. It is interpreted. That said, there are utilities out there than can compile a Python script to a Windows executable. I personally have never used them, so I don't know about their limitations.
As for Android, I've heard of frameworks for making Android apps with Python, but I don't know of any off the top of my head.
>
> Is it possible to create GUI elements with a good IDE? Can they be defined like in Visual Basic with given sizes, fonts, visible/invisible, etc.?
I'm fairly certain there are GUI editors for Python. I don't use any because I don't write anything with a GUI.
>
> Is it easy to do matrix operations in Python? Or do I need to write subroutines like in Visual Basic?
Check out the numpy and scipy packages.
>
> Could someone kindly tell me advantages and disadvantages of Python? Or any better options? I have like 40-50 VB Forms and may be around 20000 lines of code. It will be a task to learn a new language and translate/re-write that code.
IMO, Python's greatest advantage is readability. Python's syntax just plain makes sense to me. It is just an easy language to work with. It's funny, really. I used to be a hardcore C/C++ fanatic. When I first started learning Python, I hated it. I thought it made things too easy and held your hand too much. Now, I love it because it makes things so easy and holds your hand. I spend less time worrying about memory allocation and pointer syntax and more time actually getting things done.
I think Python's biggest disadvantage is performance. If you write 100% pure Python code, it can be a bit on the slower side. However, if you're doing heavy number crunching using numpy/scipy, they're mostly written in C and are quite fast.
Basically, the way I see it, if speed of development is much more important than speed of execution, typically Python is a good choice.
>
> Thanks for your responses.
I'm hoping someone else will be able to give a better response to Python on Android and the GUI editor.
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