A few questions

[Alex Martelli]

jay <jyoung79 at kc.rr.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm totally new to Python and was hoping someone might be able to  
> answer a few questions for me:
> 
> 1.  What are your views about Python vs Perl?  Do you see one as  
> better than the other?

Yep: if I didn't find Python more readable, maintainable and
understandable, I obviously wouldn't have switched.


> 2.  Is there a good book to start with while learning Python?  I'm  
> currently reading 'Python Essential Reference' by David M. Beazley.
> So far it looks like a pretty good book, but would like more  
> tutorials to work with (I've also been reading through the tutorials
> at 'python.org' which has some excellent stuff!).

Beazley's excellent book, like my direct competitor "Python in a
Nutshell", is mostly meant as a _reference_, not as a tutorial.  There
are many "starters' books": try "Dive into Python" (has the advantage
that you can try it for free online, just web search for it), or "Python
for Dummies", "Learning Python", "Core Python", and many more.

 
> 3.  Currently, I write most of my code with Xcode (on the Mac  
> platform) using Applescript.  This gives me GUI capabilities.  Is  
> there anything you'd recommend that I could use for Python that would
> give me a GUI interface?  I'd like this to be able to work for both  
> the Mac and Windows platforms.  I've been reading a little about  
> 'Claro Graphics Toolkit' and 'PyGUI'... would you recommend either of
> those?  I'll be writing code on a Mac so I need something that will  
> run on that system.

If you wanted to work with exactly the same wonderful GUI Applescript
gives you, you should try PyObjC and use it with your Mac's Cocoa...
however, that doesn't work well on Windows.  QT4 with PyQt 4 (with Eric4
as the IDE) is probably the best approach today for such cross-platform
work (haven't tried it yet, but I can vouch for the previous releases --
Qt3, PyQt 3, Eric3).  Most popular, however, is no doubt wxWindows --
mostly because you can freely use it to develop SW which you plan to
distribute under closed-source licenses, while Qt &c force you to choose
-- either pay, or, if you even distribute your code, it will have to be
under the GPL.  I'm not sure how well wxWindows works on Mac nowadays,
though -- I'm sure somebody else will be able to tell you.  For me
personally, nowadays, it's Cocoa for Mac-only apps, while any
non-Mac-only apps I write as web-apps instead.


Alex