Everything good about Python except GUI IDE?

[BartC]

On 28/02/2016 14:03, Rustom Mody wrote:
> On Sunday, February 28, 2016 at 7:22:08 PM UTC+5:30, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>> Rustom Mody :
>>
>>> whereas in fact every significant GUI embeds text (possibly recursively)
>>>
>>> eg TI inside GUI -- think of text inside gimp
>>> GUI inside TI -- think of Word embedding other doc types including pictures
>>> Which can be recursive -- WOrd embeds a picture embeds text
>>
>> Sigh, still nobody has mentioned an exemplary GUI application.
>>
>> An anecdote: Some weeks back my son and I were struggling to get the
>> right kind of graph out of Excel. After four hours of Google, Youtube,
>> trial and error, we gave up, took out a pad of millimeter paper and some
>> colored pencils. The whole job took my son an hour and the end result
>> looked great. He snapped a picture and sent it to the teacher by email.
>
> Point being??
> If I tried to speak Finnish I'd look a fool.
> Makes me a fool?
>
> Best I can see you dont know excel [Nor do I]
> Lets guess that you've spent 10 hours struggling with excel
> Now compare with how much with programming and 'classical' CS
> Would a couple of thousand hours be an overestimate?
> Is the inherent difficulty of excel to programming consistent with that ratio?

Some programs are just difficult to use. Yes maybe you can achieve 
something with enough knowledge and training, but then you're getting 
the result despite the obstacles put in your way rather than because the 
software is so helpful.

20 years ago, when these things were simpler, MS Word had a mind of its 
own even then. I had to produce a manual of few hundred pages, with 
diagrams and images, and it just wasn't going to happen. Not without 
spending a year on it. And employing someone to do it cost thousands.

In the end I spent a week or two throwing together some simple mark-up 
language, written in my own editor, which was then processed by my own 
script language and ending up (via my own graphics software along the 
way) as Postscript. The results were perfect.

(Have you ever had a situation where you have to edit a bit of text 
where a word is in italic or has some particular style. You delete the 
word, and try and add some more text, but it persists in using the style 
of the deleted text rather than the current style. You move further 
away; still the same. You end up deleting everything including every 
trace of that word and its style. Yet start typing on a now blank 
document, and it's still the wrong style!

That's what I mean by these applications having minds of their own. And 
with a 300-page document you can't just start all over, you need 
something reliable, and not so smart.)

-- 
Bartc