questions from a lost sheep

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    Joe> I've started to think fondly of the rock-solid stability of Python,
    Joe> and have been wondering if perhaps aggressive unit testing could
    Joe> mitigate most of the problems of weak typing.

Note:  Python is not weakly typed.  It is dynamically typed.  But, yes,
there is no substitute for unit tests in a language like Python.

    Joe> But that still leaves the other issue: creating high-quality
    Joe> desktop apps that look and feel just as good to users as anything
    Joe> written in the "standard" tools for each platform (Cocoa, .NET,
    Joe> etc.).  REALbasic still does a great job of that (when it works at
    Joe> all).  What's the state of the art in desktop app development in
    Joe> Python these days?

Dabo was just mentioned here earlier today:

    http://www.dabodev.com/

I have no experience with it, but it might be worth a look.  From the front
page:

    Dabo's authors, Ed Leafe and Paul McNett, have strong backgrounds in
    database application development using the awesome and underrated
    Microsoft Visual FoxPro development environment.

    While Visual FoxPro shines at developing data-centric applications, it
    has one limitation that cannot be ignored: it only runs on Microsoft
    Windows, and Ed and Paul both have clients that want their applications
    to run on Linux and Macintosh. We are sure we are not alone in this
    regard: it is a multi-platform world with more diverse needs than one
    vendor can fulfill.

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