How is GUI programming in Python?

[Paul Rubin]

Michel Bouwmans <mfb.chikazuku at gmail.com> writes:
> > If by "best" you mean "easiest", that is probably tkinter, 

> I don't quite agree with you on this. Tkinter may be easy because it is
> available by standard in Python, but that's about it in my opinion. The
> API, look and performance hit is horrible. You're much better of with PyQt4
> which makes the job really simple.

Well, it's a trade-off, the person wanted a cross platform gui and the
#1 hurdle for something like PyQt4 is getting it to work on each of
the platforms you desire to run on.  With tkinter, that has already
been done.  I can walk up to any Linux, Windows, Mac, etc. box where
Python is installed and put up a simple tkinter gui in under a minute.
With anything else, I'm in installation hell for some indeterminate
amount of time before I can put up "hello world", especially if I
insist on installing from source (the alternative is accepting
binaries from yet another third party, like handing out more and more
keys to your house).  

I agree with you that tkinter gui's don't look as slick as PyQt4 etc.
Whether that's important depends on your application's requirements.
For what I've done with it so far, it's been good enough.  I haven't
compared the Python API's but have used some other gui toolokts on
other platforms and tkinter seems comparable to the others in ease of
use.  I hadn't really thought about performance for something like a
gui, though I guess it could matter for certain types of apps.