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

[fifeclub at my-deja.com]

I am "pre-beginner".  I'm probably at the start of a very long journey.
Basically, I want to learn how to create relatively simple Windows
Applications (although I'm not against "exporting" to other OS's).  So I
did some quick research and found that many programming languages existed
for this purpose.

So now I'm trying to decide which language is best for me.  I'm doing my
research on which language to learn by reading the newsgroups postings
and Python seems to be among my front-runners.  First let me say that I'm
looking for a (relatively) EASY-TO-LEARN language with which I can also
learn programming in general.  But I also want to be able to do more as
I become more experienced. I have considerable experience hand-coding
HTML (using notepad only on my Windows 98 platform), but I have no true
programming experience.  Despite my aversion to WYSIWYG HTML-editors
such as Frontpage, I beleive that any help I can get in programming more
complex GUI Windows applications would be a blessing.

NowI've got many questions for all of you who use Python.  (And please
dumb things down to my current "non-programmer" level of comprehension!)

1.  First of all, is Python what I'm looking for:  a way to create
Windows (or other OS's) applications?
2.  Is Python RELATIVELY one of the easiest ways to do this?
3.  What about Visual Basic? (the most commonly used) Why should I not
choose VB instead?
4.  Is there a WYSIWYG editor (like Frontpage is for HTML)?  Is this what
Tkinter is?  Is there a 'better' WYSIWYG editor for Python that I should
use instead?
5.  What's the deal with Tk/Tcl?  Why is this so closely tied with Python
and Tkinter if Python is it's own language?  (The install instructions
say I may need to install Tk/Tcl too (what ever that is))
6.  Where should I start?  (I've already downloaded and installed
Python2.0b2 but haven't attempted to write anything)  Do I need to
download anything else?

-Thanks
-Mike


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