Database Programming

[Jonathan P.]

"francois lepoutre" <franck.lepoutre at caramail.com> wrote in message news:<3de3ac09$0$9474$79c14f64 at nan-newsreader-01.noos.net>...
>
> A personal feeling:
> - python is the way to go for sophisticated web-based database application
> (the combo we use includes apache+python+modpthon+mxodbc,
> it allows for effective  multiplatform development: win32+linux),
> ... for simpler stuff i'd expect that asp or php are leaner alternatives,
> 
> - vfp (currently in version 7-8 coming soon) still have a considerable edge
> in terms of productivity over python if you need to develop non-trivial
> data-intensive win32-only apps. Delphi shines too. Of course.
> 
> You can work it out in the opposite direction:
> 
> -build you web-based things in vfp
> (See http://www.west-wind.com/webconnection/),
> - build classical data-intensive c/s applications in python
> (See http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/index.php or even
> www.wxpython.org to
>
> Unless you prefer java (no experience there),  python is REALLY the way to
> go for
> the http production (the portal thing). It is platform-independant. A
> critical asset.
> 
> Because vfp is proprietary stuff and python syntax just plain great, we'd
> love to transfer the whole admin stuff to python-only, pyqt look promising. But > this is still unrealistic to-day.
>
> We are still significantly more productive in vfp when building traditionnal
> 2-tiers apps. 
> 
> These are personal opinions only...

Python syntactic power and clarity seems to do wonders for
productivity. I rewrote a Delphi/TMySQL app in Python/Firebird
and it took me roughly half the time. From 1 month to 2.5 weeks. 
And the resulting code was much more easily modifiable and 
maintainable. The very high level data structures are the key. 
Object Pascal is very low level and all the RAD niceties help 
very little when you're coding your main application logic.

Note that the more than half of the Python dev't time involved
the creation, from scratch, of some fairly sophisticated 
curses-based text widgets (now I know why they call it curses) 
which I can now reuse.  The Python curses API is the first Python 
API I've encountered that let me down. Every other Python API 
I've tried makes me want to do cartwheels for being so Pythonic. 
I guess that can't be helped because curses itself is a byzantine 
API.

I wouldn't want to code a GUI app in Python nor was I tempted
to because the deployment machine was a 32MB Pentium 200 and
there was no way I'm going to run XFree on it. Moreover, a
neophyte computer user found my text-based app simpler and less
intimidating than using Windows!