GUIs - A Modest Proposal

[Michael Torrie]

On 06/06/2010 04:55 PM, ant wrote:
> What an interesting set of responses I got!
> And - even more interesting - how few of them actually seem to think
> there is a problem, let
> alone make any attempt to move the situation forward.

You simply haven't made a case that there is a problem to be solved.
Why should a language be integrated with and married to a GUI toolkit
anyway?  Python was born in the Unix world, and the Unix philosophy of
using the tools that make sense in a modular and pipelined way is very
applicable to GUI development.

There is a case to be made for a widely portable, lowest-common
denominator UI toolkit, but that will always only fulfill limited needs
and always will be subjected to the limitations that have been specified
by several posters.

Thus for Python to really be successful in a broader sense, we need
good, solid, bindings for Cocoa, or Windows forms (whatever they are
using these days), as well as the most popular windows toolkits.  We
don't need another Swing.  As someone else mentioned, web-based
interfaces are increasingly important.  That means you have to write
your apps in a modular way that separates the GUI from the business
logic.  That way you can develop a nice GUI app and then, when there is
demand, give it a web front end.