I'm considering trying to learn Python for a specific reason, and hoped the group might help me get a sense for whether it would be worth my time. The situation...
Me: total beginner w/ a sense of programming basics and 1 week familiarizing myself with Python world. Use WinXP. Got Python 2.5. Fooled around in IDLE, made "hello world!" and one which takes user input and tracks a string or two. Project: ambitious GUI program for Win/Mac/Linux. Target user: average person. App to look elegant, and be intuitive, responsive, exectuable, have its own icon, etc. Needs to store user info in large database for the long term, run in the background and pop up at assigned times. There are needs for graphing, data analysis, file management, word processing, text processing, web synchronization, etc. It would have to look like commercial software, though it may turn out to be free open source. It's envisioned as a pretty tall order, thus my wonder if I'm delusional in thinking I have any hope to accomplish this. To begin, I have decided on wxPython as the GUI toolkit. Have also begun trying the SPE editor with wxGlade as the GUI builder, and have made a few line program to create a window. Lastly, I have used py2exe to turn that into an executable file with its library files for running on computers without Python installed or without the wxPython libraries. I have read FAQs and looked into it. Remaining questions are: Can Python *alone* produce something like what I've described? Or would I have to have some parts written in C? Or is Python really not best-suited to these needs? Is using SPE with wxGlade a good choice? What about Boa Constructor? Is it something one person could do over the course of a year or so, working say 10 hours a week on it? Or is this really out of reach of anyone other than a hardcore programmer or even a team of them? If I write it using Python 2.5 and wxPython, do I have to use py2app or something to create an executable and necessary library files so it will run on Mac? (Because of wxPython's libraries, which the Mac won't have?). Thanks for any thoughts you might share. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
