[Tutor] Tutor Newbie

[Alan Gauld]

"Sam Last Name" <the_sam_smart at yahoo.com> wrote

> Hey guys, need some info on "programs" :)

A program has two meanings in programming!
To the programmer a program is just a piece of
sofftware that he has written, usually one that
is runnable. It may be an entire *application* or
just a part of a bigger software suite.

To end users a program is another name for
an application - a full set of software tools that
togerher fulfil some function - a word processor
say. Most modern applications consist of several
programs (in the programmers sense)

I'll assume that you are here askling about how
to create an application?

> Heres a Very simple Script that works with basically any numbers.
> # my question is what would it take (programs, extra stuff in 
> script,
> ect..) to make this a nice looking usable desktop program?

By nice looking I'll assume you mean that it has a GUI?

What that normally means is logically dividing your design
into two parts, the presentation(GUI) and the logic(the algorithms
etc). You create the logic section as a set of functions.
You then create a GUI using a GUI Toolkit (in Python
you have the choice of several toolkits, the most popular
being wxPython and Tkinter which ships with Python).
The GUI controls (buttons, menu items etc) are then hooked
up to the functions in your logic section.

So as a beginner you need to learn how to:
1) write Python functions
2) write a GUI using a toolkit

In practice you may need to create some kind of installation
program too if you plan on giving the application to any other
users.

For now I'd forget about GUIs and concentrate on getting
the basic Python functions under your belt. You can usually
add a GUI to your programs retrospecively without too much
pain.

You will find information on all of the above in my tutorial.

-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld