Beginning to learn python...help needed!

[Bryan Mongeau]

Hi Martyn,

I think its great you chose python to expand on your programming abilities. 
Hopefully you'll become one of those programmers that learnt the best way 
of doing things right off the bat.  Object Oriented (OO) programming is 
built around one fundamental concept:

Everything can (and should) be built with small, *independent* components.

Break a task down conceptually first into its components. Then create 
objects that are ignorant of everything else but their assigned task. Then 
build your complete program by plugging your objects together.

This also has the effect of helping you code in a style that will permit 
you to reuse those objects over and over again, in different projects. 
Other people will be able to use your objects and save time because they 
are self-contained "mini-programs" that accomplish a single task.

> I'm also getting nowhere with Tkinter.  I tried to look at the Tkinter
> tutorial which can be downloaded from python.org, but found that it went
> far to fast without nearly enough explanation.  I've seen that wxPython is
> an alternative, but someone said that there was less documentation
> available for that.  Given what I've found with the documentation for
> Tkinter, this comment puts me off slightly.  Can anyone point me in the
> direction of detailed info on an appropriate GUI?  (Am I right in thinking
> that the reason I'm having trouble with Tkinter is that the Object
> Orientedness is more apparent early on?)
> 

Ugh TKinter. Well, I can make a few recommendations but most (read: all) 
GUI toolkits are heavily OO.  My experience has also taught me that good 
documentation is more important that the features of the toolkit itself, 
due to the fact that if you can't figure out how to use it, it's useless to 
you.

Trolltech develops a premiere GUI toolkit called QT which has by far the 
best documentation of any I've seen. Check out:

http://doc.trolltech.com/

for proof. :)  The toolkit is written in C++ but python wrappings that make 
your job incredibly easy are available at:

http://www.thekompany.com/projects/pykde/

For anything more complicated than a toy program, I would consider QT.

> Apologies for writing a rather long and rambly message!

The ramblier, the better... 
-- 
<==================================>
Bryan Mongeau
Lead Developer, Director
eEvolved Real-Time Technologies Inc.
www.eevolved.com
<==================================>

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That 
means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the 
distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly 
persistent illusion."-- Einstein