Programmer-Wanna-Be (Is Python for me?)

[JTC Murphy]

I need to fix the comments about VB as they are far from accurate.

VB is a fairly self contained development tool. It contains almost
everything one needs to develop Windows Apps out of the box. Yes it uses
a large run-time library and .OCX components but you can achieve most
things using stuff that either exists in a standard Windows installation
or is supplied with.

It has an advanced IDE which potentially makes it a highly productive
tool /provided/ you're happy to live within the box.

Where it starts to fall down is in the underlying language - the
version of Basic provides comprehensive tools for creating well
structured programs *but* its object oriented features are lacking in
places - specifically in inheritance (roll on VB7 - which will, in
effect, be a different language).

Which brings us to python. Python appears to have many of the merits of
Basic - in that its a simple effective tool from the outset. Beyond that
its a better OO language - and I'm firmly believe that one wants to
learn OOP.

Where VB scores is in the ease of creating Windows GUI apps, but lined
up against this on the python side are the vast array of libraries for
doing interesting things. More importantly these are more accessible
than those available to the VB programmer.

To learn to do GUI stuff with Python will take more effort (the drag,
drop, double-click of VB is hard to beat) - but it will be a worthwhile
investment as you will have a better understanding of how things hang
together and this can be universally applied.

Finally Python costs an awful lot less, is cross platform and isn't
about to undergo a radical transformation...

As someone who earns his living writing VB I know where I'd start (and
it isn't where I am now!)

Have fun,

Murph

>>> Louis Luangkesorn <lluang at northwestern.edu> 11/10/00 18:48:21 >>>
To be honest, VB is a product that you can get results very quickly. 
This
makes it real nice for building a graphical interface, . . . for a
program
written in another language.  For actually getting something done,
there is a
lot of overhead because of the linked libraries (underlying code that
actually does the work). Also, for some reason, every library I've
ever
needed from Visual Basic was poorly documented and full of errors (and
I'm
talking about commercial products).  If you don't use any libraries,
your
programs