Re: Adventures in Quest for GUI RAD

Hello,

> But I know from past experience that I am not going to make a lot of
> progress teaching myself any form of C language.

I  had to learn programming with Pascal at university first. It worked
for me.

Then  I  had  to  learn Fortran. Didn't like some things about it, but
still managed to get it to work.

Then  I  had  to  learn  C  and H-A-T-E-D it. Never used it and forgot
everyhing about it after the class' final test.

And  then  I heard about the existence of Python. The first language I
learned voluntarily and the only one I'm still using. If Python didn't
exist,  I  wouldn't  have  done  anything related to programming since
university.  Just  as  I  wouldn't  use  computers out of work if Macs
didn't exist.

> I  should  have  made  it  clear  that I am just a hobbyist teaching
> myself in my spare time, for fun.

I'm  not  a  developer either. Nor am I using Python intensively in my
job.

Despite  this  I'm  planning  to spend a week (during my vacation!) at
Europython  this  year.  And  the trip there plus the registration fee
will  cost me quite a bit of money - Sweden is expensive and not quite
around the corner.

What is nice about Python especially for non-professional programmers:

-  it scales from trivial throw-away command-line scripts (<=> Delphi)
to beyond what you will ever need (the GNUe project is implementing an
ERP  system  with  it)
-  it  interfaces  with  basically every kind of library, interface or
whatever;  you  can  use COM on Windows (<=> Java), Applescript on the
Mac  and  lots  of  open source applications use it as their scripting
language

Consequently,  Python  alone is likely to get everything done that you
will ever need in your whole life.

And  - Postgres suports it as a "second native" language for triggers,
stored procedures etc.

And  -  you  don't have to deal with memory management (you can "help"
the garbage collector by resolving cyclic references yourself, but you
don't have to)

> It  is  just too bad that there is not a better, more user friendly,
> well documented front-end tool for Postgresql in open source.

Err, you mean an IDE which allows to implement GUI applications (using
Postgres or not) easily?

For Python there are quite a few which use either wxPython or PyQt (or
GTK, but those are for Linux and *BSD).

One  using  wxyPthon  is  GNUe  designer, although it is unfortunately
badly (mostly un-)documented.

Black  Adder  is  an  example  for one using Qt. It even allows you to
build   not-open-source  applications  with  PyQt  due  to  a  special
licensing arrangement.

OpenOffice  forms  allow  to  do  nice things as well, with or without
Python  (via  PyUNO). In fact imho instead of implementing yet another
open-source  database  for  2.0,  they  should  just  have  included a
Postgresql (SDBC?) driver in OO.

> I guess MSAccess is fine, except expensive.

And  it's  REALLY  limited in what you can do (not just concerning the
amounts of data it can handle).

> Also,  given  the  fact  that  M$  has pulled the rug out from under
> Visual  Basic,  one can never be too certain what the future will be
> for something like MSAccess.

Won't  happen with Python. Even if Guido van Rossum would get run over
by  a  truck  tomorrow  (which  hopefully won't happen), it would keep
getting  developed,  because  it  has grown far to usefull for far too
many  people.  And  no MS, Sun, Oracle or whoever can pull the plug on
it. The same applies to wxWidgets.

> Even  the  world  of  Visual  Foxpro  has in some ways slowly eroded
> because of perennial rumors that Microsoft will withdraw support for
> it.

Some  ex-Visual  Foxpro  developers  are  currently  working  on     a
replacement  called  Dabo  and  guess what they are using - Python and
wxWidgets.

> Perhaps  the stunning success of the Open Source community is fueled
> by  the  ruthless  and fickle nature of companies such as Microsoft.
> One  would  like  to build upon some foundation that is not going to
> disappear  in  a  few  years.  Realbasic  looks  like  an attractive
> alternative to Visual Basic, but then that is one lone company which
> is  riding  the  Tusnami of the Windows operating system (although I
> guess they are cross platform),

Beep - RealBasic was implemented on the Mac first. :-)

> but  the  point  is, whatever one chooses to learn, if it is tied to
> Windows, then its future is tied to the whims of Microsoft.

Not necessarily.

With Pyhon and wxWidgets or Qt, you can easily work on Windows, Linux,
*BSD  (and  MacOS  and  Windows CE and PalmOS and your series 60 Nokia
mobile  phone  and and and) today and not worry too much about whether
(and on what system) you'll be able to use it tomorrow.

Best regards

Wolfgang Keller

--
P.S.: My From-address is correct