Hi all,
I used to by a big Python fan, many years ago [1]. I stopped using it
after discovering REALbasic, because my main developmental need is to
write desktop applications that are as native as possible on each
platform, and because I really like a strongly-typed language with a
good IDE. At the time (circa 2000), Python just didn't cut the
mustard in this regard. (Indeed, none of the standard cross-platform
C libraries -- Tk, QT, wxWidgets -- worked worth a darn on the Mac, at
least at that time.)
But REALbasic is a commercial, closed-source project with a small
development team, and I find myself consistently frustrated by quality
issues (read "bugs"). I've started to think fondly of the rock-solid
stability of Python, and have been wondering if perhaps aggressive
unit testing could mitigate most of the problems of weak typing.
But that still leaves the other issue: creating high-quality desktop
apps that look and feel just as good to users as anything written in
the "standard" tools for each platform (Cocoa, .NET, etc.). REALbasic
still does a great job of that (when it works at all). What's the
state of the art in desktop app development in Python these days?
Also, apart from simply searching with Google, is there anyplace I
could go to find a good Python contractor to build a cross-platform
desktop app demo?
Many thanks,
- Joe
[1] http://www.strout.net/info/coding/python/
I used to by a big Python fan, many years ago [1]. I stopped using it
after discovering REALbasic, because my main developmental need is to
write desktop applications that are as native as possible on each
platform, and because I really like a strongly-typed language with a
good IDE. At the time (circa 2000), Python just didn't cut the
mustard in this regard. (Indeed, none of the standard cross-platform
C libraries -- Tk, QT, wxWidgets -- worked worth a darn on the Mac, at
least at that time.)
But REALbasic is a commercial, closed-source project with a small
development team, and I find myself consistently frustrated by quality
issues (read "bugs"). I've started to think fondly of the rock-solid
stability of Python, and have been wondering if perhaps aggressive
unit testing could mitigate most of the problems of weak typing.
But that still leaves the other issue: creating high-quality desktop
apps that look and feel just as good to users as anything written in
the "standard" tools for each platform (Cocoa, .NET, etc.). REALbasic
still does a great job of that (when it works at all). What's the
state of the art in desktop app development in Python these days?
Also, apart from simply searching with Google, is there anyplace I
could go to find a good Python contractor to build a cross-platform
desktop app demo?
Many thanks,
- Joe
[1] http://www.strout.net/info/coding/python/