[SciPy-user] Thoughts on GUI development

[Stef Mientki]

Eric Bruning wrote:
> Hi Gael, et al.:
>
> Regrettably, I couldn't attend scipy this year, but have been enjoying
> everyone's slides. I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this
> message is, but one item in your slides was quite relevant to what
> I've been working on this week.
>
> In your lightning talk on the interactive shell, you wrote:
> "What do we gain with GUIs?
> -Pretty look and feel
> -Doesn't make you more productive/richer: no economic or academic incentive"
>
> At a gut level, I disagree that GUIs don't make you more productive. I
> imagine that you and others probably disagree, too. After all, we must
> find *some* non-superficial value in them to go to the effort of
> writing them! For certain datasets, I've found that I can't do the
> analysis I want without a good GUI for browsing and tagging data.
> Since this involves syncing up plots and animations across 4D, the
> code is non-trivial.
>
> So, the snag comes at the point of trying to justify all the time you
> spend writing a GUI app; you hope for future efficiency in analysis,
> but the benefits are pushed into the future right along with
> publishable results (==riches, such as it is in academia). And much of
> the efficiency comes by implementing the hardest features: not just
> plots, but draggable, zoomable, taggable, animated, linked plots.
>
> Perhaps the best way to conclude is by saying thanks to all those that
> are pushing forward on the graphical toolkits. The faster it is to
> make an app, the less conflict we'll all feel when justifying time
> spent crafting GUIs.
>
>   
For every specialist, it doesn't matter what tool he uses, GUI or not.
But for the boys and girls that once in a while need some tools,
GUI is very very convenient way of not have to know / remember all the 
small details !!
Why do you think all amateurs (and a few professionals) like LabView so 
much ;-)
But even more important than the GUI is feeding the user with the right 
apriori knowledge of the tool and the domain at the right time.

Just my 2 cents,
I'm not an expert, but ...
... I'm trying to build a Labview equivalent in Python ;-)

cheers,
Stef