Considering migrating to Python from Visual Basic 6 for engineering applications

[nholtz]

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 2:49:44 PM UTC-5, wrong.a... at gmail.com wrote:
> I am mostly getting positive feedback for Python.
> ...

I'm surprised no one has mentioned jupyter yet, so here goes ...

A browser-based notebook, see http://www.jupyter.org

I think this is an unparalleled way to learn Python, by experimentation at the start and for development later.  As an example, I wanted to do some table
processing, so a couple of lines to experiment with Pandas reading CSV files, then a couple of more lines to start processing the data ... What a wonderful way to experimentally develop software ...

Can even develop simple GUIs *really* easily (but packaging for distribution is probably not easy, unless distribution is only within an organization and that organization can run a private notebook server).

If you want to try it, this page

http://jupyter.readthedocs.org/en/latest/install.html

recommends installing Anaconda Python which installs a *lot* of stuff (numpy, scipy, sympy, pandas, etc. etc.)

I highly recommend both (I use them for Civil Engineering (structures) software and teach a related university course)