Python+wxWindows as Visual Basic replacement?

[Jeff Shannon]

In article <a82lnn$gdu at dispatch.concentric.net>, 
rs at onsitetech.com says...
> Hey all,
> 
> Anyone have any experience using Pythonas an alternative to VB for Windows
> database client apps?  It looks like all the pieces are in place -
> wxWindows, py2exe, a Python ADO library...
> 
> Python per se isn't the issue - what I'm not sure about is what the
> development and deployment experience is like, when using these parts, taken
> together.

Well, I don't have any direct experience with writing database 
clients, nor with using the full VB development environment, but 
from what I have gathered...

Pure GUI development in VB is likely to be a bit easier, because 
the VB environment is (I have heard) quite polished, and allows 
you to do an awful lot with simple 'painting'.  There are some 
graphical designers for wxPython (notably wxDesigner and Boa 
Constructor), but I don't think that either is up to the level of 
VB's.

Of course, you *do* get all the advantages of working in Python 
over working in VB.  If you're doing any significant amount of 
processing of the data within your client, I'd think that this 
advantage would outweigh VB's graphical designer's benefits.

As for py2exe, my personal feeling is that it's usefulness is 
limited unless you're likely to distribute it to a significant 
number of workstations, and those workstations cannot be expected 
to use Python for any other purpose.  In my own situation, I'm 
unlikely to distribute any of the software that I'm working on to 
more than half a dozen machines, and on several of those I'm 
likely to want to use Python for a number of projects.  As a 
result, it's not difficult for me to ensure that Python is 
functioning on all my target machines, and I can distribute code 
as distutils packages, which saves having a separate interpreter 
for every application I'm creating.  Whether py2exe is worth the 
effort for you, will depend on your specific circumstances -- if 
you're wanting to put no more than one or two Python applications 
on a relatively large number of machines, or simply have 
little/no control over the machines it should run on, then py2exe 
would be a lot more useful.
 
Hope this helps...

-- 

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International