Python for professsional Windows GUI apps?

[rurpy at yahoo.com]

On 08/24/2009 06:08 AM, Gilles Ganault wrote:
> 	I was wondering if some people in this ng use Python and some GUI
> toolkit (PyWin32, wxWidgets, QT, etc.) to build professional
> applications, and if yes, what it's like, the pros and cons, etc.
>
> I'm especially concerned about the lack of controls, the lack of
> updates (lots of controls in wxWidgets are 1.0 deadware), and problems
> linked to how to update users' PC remotely when I build a new version
> using eg. Py2exe.
>
> I need controls for business apps like access to databases, good data
> grid, printing reports (with or without barcodes), etc.

I sure you'll get plenty of GUI-x is really great and you'll
is just as good as anything commercial out there, so I thought
a minority opinion, even if unpopular, might be useful.

Won't comment on the control choices or packaging issues, but I
am at the moment doing a little database-connected app that
presents editable data in a spreadsheet like (grid) form using
wxPython.

It has been a very painful process.  I have not found any simple
pre-written code to connect a wxPython grid to a database so
that the result is something like a Microsoft Access datasheet.[*1]
It is probably taking me 10 times as long to develop this app
in WxPython/Postgresql as it did to develop something similar
in MS Access/VBA/SQL Server.

I haven't needed for printing yet, but I've read wxpython maillist
posts about the difficultly of getting printing to work so you may
want to check that out as well before commiting to wxpython.

A meta-issue that applies (I think) to both wxPython and PyQt
is that both projects seem to be highly dependent on a single
person leading one to worry about the "bus" scenario.

I am not a fan of Microsoft (in fact I despise their commercial
behavior and many aspects of thier products) but I am reporting
the reality as I've experienced it.

[*1] There are ORMs like Sqlalchemy but they introduce a additional
problems like inefficient database operations, dependency on a
large external package, etc.  It is hard to tell for sure since
the Sqlalchemy docs are lousy, which of course means even more
development time.