So far

[Jaime Wyant]

On 10/6/05, CppNewB <cppnewb at noway.com> wrote:
> I am absolutely loving my experience with Python.  Even vs. Ruby, the syntax
> feels very clean with an emphasis on simplification.
>

Yes.  We all love python, welcome aboard!

> My only complaint is that there doesn't appear to be a great commercial IDE
> for the language.  I've tried Komodo, etc and they are nice applications,
> but they don't feel like they give me the "power" like a Visual Studio or
> Delphi (I wish I could articulate better the differences).    Finding a
> descent GUI builder has been a challenge as well.  Most of them have support
> for Dialogs, but what about more complex UI's?  I may need a resizable frame
> within a resizable frame? I haven''t found a GUI builder with a great feel
> yet.
>

wingide is really nice, but costs money.  It supports auto-completion
in a really intelligent way.  However, it was just too resource hungry
on my laptop - (1.4ghz Pentium(m), 512 mb ram).  Sometimes
autocompletion was just too slow (i noticed the HD spinning).

You're probably not going to find a GUI builder that has a nice
polished feel, like Delphi or Visual studio.  The *closest* thing you
may find to this would be Python's Boa-Constructor
(http://boa-constructor.sourceforge.net/).

If you choose to use wxPython as your GUI framework, then you may not
need a fancy-schmancy IDE.  I find that xemacs along with xrced work
really well for me.

The toughest thing about wxPython (and wxWidgets) is wrapping your
brain around sizers.  They're easy to understand -- until something
doesn't quite layout the way you expected.  Unusual layouts are always
a programmer's misunderstanding of sizers (at least in my experience).

I recommend trying either wxGlade/xrced for gui building (i find
wxGlade's latest release to be *REALLY* unstable for me in windows). 
Next use xemacs or Stanni's python editor to edit your code.

You'll be amazed at how productive you can be once you *learn* how to
handle building guis with one app, and manually tieing in the event
handlers in your editor of choice.  This will also `not hide' a lot of
things that goes on behind the scenes.

> Other than that, my experience has been wonderful.  Even after my
> complaints, I plan on sticking with Python for a while.

That's great!
jw