Suitability of python to specific project

[Dave Brueck]

Bob wrote:
> My question is, to what extent is python suitable for these tasks and how
reliable is it in relation to each one of them?

Hi Bob,

Suitability of course depends on lots of things, but if it's similar to "has
been used successfully in applications currently in production use", then
you're probably good to go:

> The project will use wxPython for the user-interface
> it will use python for multi-threading (but not for very heavy computation,
> for communication inside a local network (including network overload
avoidance considerations)
> for database operations (probably using sqlite and postgres),
> for general computations
> and simple file manipulations,
> and maybe for communicating with a server on the internet.

At one time or another I've used all of these in production applications.

> It will not necessarily involve heavy computation, but may sometimes want to
transfer large amounts of data through
> different computers on the network.

For computation-intensive stuff you may end up calling out to a C/C++ library,
but not necessarily for file transfers (you can if you want, of course, but for
file transfers Python can easily exceed the capacity of a 100 Mbps network if
you want it to).

> It will also involve interaction with special hardware which will be
implemented in C++.

If your code is (or can be) in DLL form, take a look at ctypes - IMO it's
hands-down the easiest way to call C code. But if that's not possible,
Pyrex/SWIG/etc are good options too.

-Dave