[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: How long until OS X Python is ready for prime time?

[David Eppstein]

In article <p05200f09ba18899d94b2@[192.168.1.50]>,
 John W Baxter <jwblist@olympus.net> wrote:

> The village heretic says:
> 
> Given the current state of things Python, and that fact that you're
> starting from not-Python, you *might* want to give a thought to RealBASIC.
> (After doing so, you might well return to Python for the project, of
> course.)
> 
> More $$$ (I've forgotten what they do for academic folk).
> Cross platform as long as you mean Mac and Windows (which your audience
> suggests you do).
> Simple install, but large download.
> Does GUI well on both platforms.  Last I knew, still did that old "dead"
> Mac OS 9 in addition to Mac OS X--and 9 is what the Mac part of your
> audience likely has.
> http://www.realbasic.com/

Thanks for the suggestion, but to me the choices are either to hack the 
current C++ project, or to rewrite in a language that would be 
significantly simpler for expressing complex algorithms, namely Python.
My naive impression of current Basics (having not programmed in the 
language for probably 25 years) is they are great for whipping up quick 
UIs and miserable for anything else complex.

Anyway, the OS 9'ers already have a working version of my app, it's the 
OS X'ers that are nagging me for an update.

So far I've started playing with pyobjc and (except for lack of cross 
platform ability) I like what I see.  But I want to try using it on a 
couple medium size apps before tackling the bigger one.

-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein@ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/