Event-driven GUIs, PythonWorks, Boa, wxWindows; future directions of event-driven Python?

[Alex Martelli]

"bradclark1" <bradclark1 at msn.com> wrote in message
news:ePZ#Y669AHA.266 at cpmsnbbsa07...
    ...
> Am I missing something here? From what I read at the above it says for
.net.
> I didn't see anything else about it?

*sigh* once again, trust Microsoft's marketing to make an unholy
mess of things.  Microsoft .NET is a specific platform architecture
with an intermediate-language (MSIL), a common runtime library, &c.

So "of course" MS's marketing immediately went and stuck a ".NET"
affix to the next releases of a slew of Microsoft products that do
*NOT* require or mandate this new platform architecture (though
they may to some degree support it -- but not necessarily), such
as the new releases of many "Microsoft Backoffice" servers, and
the new release of Microsoft Visual Studio (it's not going to be
VS7, as it's coming after VS6 -- it's going to be VS.NET...).

Activestate's Visual Python supports and relies on Microsoft
Visual Studio 7, and unfortunately the latter *IS* named
"Microsoft Visual Studio .NET".  Activestate's Visual Python
does ***NOT*** require you to install Microsoft's .NET *PLATFORM*
nor to develop for it -- because "VS.NET" doesn't.  The naming
of "VS.NET" is basically just the usual geniuses in MS's mktg
at work -- like back when they managed to muddy the waters
enough between COM and Active/X (two related technologies with
*BIG* differences -- COM being the platform upon which you
might OR MIGHT NOT choose to further deploy/support ActiveX) as
to set widespread adoption of COM back...:-(.

The overall technical picture and the strategical prospects
are complicated enough that the last thing the industry needs
is brilliant marketeers throwing spanners in the work by
creative naming.  To be honest, although MS's mktg does have
this "endearing" habit, they're far from alone -- one of the
worst examples of this creative naming was Netscape's renaming
of livescript to "Javascript", which is ***STILL TODAY*** a
source of confusion for Dynamic HTML students who believe they
may have to study some Java to control their webpages because
it "sounds" like Javascript has something to do with Java (it
doesn't, besides the thinnest syntax-sugar similarity, but...).


Alex