Sort-of OT: Learning Python

[Alex Tweedly]

Geoff Canyon wrote:

> Those of you who know me know that I am always fascinated by  
> different programming languages. I've programmed in more than a few,  
> but read up on dozens. Lately I've been taking a stab at Python.
>
> I'm keeping track of progress at http://learningpython.wordpress.com/
>
> So far it's mostly gripes and rants ;-)
>
> The reason I say sort-of off topic is that I'm making no secret of  
> the fact that I come from a Revolution background. The latest post  
> compares the out-of-the-box experience between Rev and a Python IDE.  
> In Rev, installation and building a standalone application takes 16  
> steps, including retrieving and entering the demo license code. In  
> Python, after 10 steps I have downloaded nothing, installed nothing,  
> and built nothing, have gone down a blind alley or two, and have more  
> questions than I started with.
>
Before I go and read the blog, I'll take a wild guess that you're on a 
Mac.  Why ?

1. Python installation on Windows tends to be pretty smooth  (both 
Python itself and tools for it)
    Python installation on Linux tends to assume you know everything already
    Oh yeah, darn, better do something for the Mac too - try this ...

OK, OS X is probably not really an afterthought these days - but it used 
to be, and often still feels like it.

For a long time I believed the inverse of Rev - that it must be really 
smooth and work well on Mac, but it still had all these rough edges and 
fairly "basic and unavoidable" problems on Win. Even though various 
people on here said it wasn't the case, it still felt like Rev must be 
an office full of Macs with the one PC used for creating release in a 
corner somewhere. (Note - I said "creating a release", not "testing a 
release" :-)

The last couple of releases (that's 2.6 and 2.6.1 - I'm not ready for 
2.7 yet) have come a long way to reduce the Windows oddities, so I no 
longer feel quite that way.

2. Python on Mac still feels a bit unfinished.
I installed Python on Win probably 3 or 4 years ago (mostly for CGI and 
command line stuff), added a graphic toolkit about 2 years ago and had 
basically no problems; about the same time I installed Rev and had a 
couple of minor problems with the installation process - and significant 
problems with the Windows bugs and incompatibilities (at the time - 
they're better now).

Less than a year ago I got a Mac, installed Python and graphic toolkit 
on it - and although it was 15 months later, it was not as clean an 
install process and still doesn't look as though Python is fully "bedded 
in" on Mac.  Rev on the other hand was entirely  smooth - confirmed what 
I had long suspected :-)   Of course, that's unfair - by that time, Rev 
was at 2.6 and the Windows problems had also gone away.

I'm not honestly sure today how to build a standalone on Mac (but then I 
don't need to - I distribute a few app to friends with PCs, but don't 
have anyone out there who wants them on Macs, so I've had no reason to 
find out). On Windows, it is really easy - marginally more effort than 
for Rev, but to make up for that I've had less trouble with differences 
between development and standalone modes on Python than I had on Rev.

(And there isn't, afaik, a way to do cross-platform standalone builds in 
Python - but I don't find that a disadvantage anyway, because I believe 
you need to do testing on the target platform anyway, and so providing a 
build/release environment there isn't a bad thing).

> When I get past the install and start describing actually programming  
> in Python, it should be better.
>
> In any case, feel free to have a look and post feedback, even if it's  
> just to point out where I went wrong in the Python install process ;-)

Will do.

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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