the general development using Python

[CM]

On Wednesday, July 10, 2013 7:57:11 PM UTC-4, Joshua Landau wrote:

> Yeah, but why keep shipping the Python interpreter? If you choose the 
> installer route, you don't have to keep shipping it -- it's only
> downloaded if you need it. If not, then you don't download it again.

I admit that not necessarily shipping the Python interpreter is much more efficient if your client base is expected to be a lot of people who already have Python and a lot of the common libraries (like wxPython).  I have a fair number of Python 3rd party libraries already on my computer, so for me, it is preferable to just download the .py files the developer has made.  

For some of the things I have thought about doing, though, the majority of the clients would never even have heard of Python other than Monty or the constrictor.  



> But I still think my way is better. Perhaps I'm just too pragmatic 
> about these things. This was triggered by the OP's original request --
> he sounds very much like he doesn't actually want this -- and it seems
> to have stuck. I don't know if being pragmatic is a bad thing, though.

I'll definitely think about the business angle of doing it the way you suggest.  For example, for consulting work where the end user is a technical worker who just need a script to automate some processes, and you expect to be providing a number of scripts over time in this way, a good way to install and setup a Python + GUI toolkit + other likely necessary libraries would be great.  For more "product sales to the mass populous", I'm less sure.
 
> In the end, something like this is best solved with a bit of A/B
> testing¹. Sit a couple of your audience down, give them the best
> implementation of each strategy (starting from the website) for some
> trivialised module and see what they think. If it turns out that being
> pragmatic does have compromises, I'm not going to argue with the data.
> I'd still be grumpy, though.

Makes sense.  I'm dubious about the full validity of A/B testing data without large data sets, but yes, at least one would be getting a feel for it.  I can also see what other projects/businesses are doing.

Thanks for the input!