Distribution

[Highdesertman]

Hi all

I am a newbie to python and haven't done any programming for some time. The
last time I did any amateur programming was back when MSDOS was (more or
less) king and Quick C was a popular version of that language.

Well things have changed and I am older. I have decided that after almost
ten years of programming inactivity, I would try my hand at it again. I
decided that I would be careful about the language I would learn (I would
have to relearn everything even if I used a language I used to be proficient
at such as compiled basic or C) and I also decided that I simply wasn't
interested (at this juncture) in getting back in the C saddle. For a variety
of reasons.

I wanted a language that was simple to use, powerful, portable and fast. I
also was looking to minimize the learning curve. I stumbled over Python
quite by accident (it was recommended in a rather obscure section of the
ZDTV website) and it seems to meet these initial requirements.

Now to my question:

If I use python to develop an application for the windows 9x environment,
 I have already downloaded the appropriate libraries and version) what form
does the finished program take? How does it get distributed? I remember in
the early days of BASIC programming, (before compiled basic) your program
was just raw code that could be (often accidentally) altered or otherwise
corrupted. In order for your basic program to be used, the user had to have
a basic compiler on board and they loaded your raw source from a text file
and executed it. Is this how Python is used? Forgive me for asking what must
be a terribly green question, but I am really curious about the final
product of a python program. In what way does the end user utilize your
code? If you should be writing to an unknown audience as in the case of
making a freeware utility (you discover that that little ditty you wrote to
solve a headache really is very useful to others) Is there any way to turn
your python code into an exe that can be easily utilized by others? If
Python is dependent on it's interpreter to run, and I am only programming
for my own needs, then that dosen't represent a weakness. But since Python
remains relatively unknown as yet, the average user isn't likely to have a
python interpreter handy. In addition, one of the real advantages of the
development of the compiler was that it gave your code a level of protection
against being tampered with and made it easily useable by a wide audience.
Python looks very elegant and seems to meet my needs with the exception of
this unknown. If anyone could help me answer this question, I would be very
much in thier debt. I am sure this need has been addressed, and I would just
like to know what the solution is.


Cheers,

Mathew