Python as a First Language
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One-liners, education, serious mission-critical applications: these still don't span Python's capabilities. The language also has unique benefits to developers of graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
GUI tools used by C, C++, and Java programmers have given GUI development a reputation for being inherently difficult and tedious. Python makes things easier and you more productive. A complete minimal GUI script can be as small and readable as:
from Tkinter import * Label(text="Alert! Your first Python GUI application works!").pack() mainloop()
Python's scalability extends to GUI development too. It stretches all the way from tiny programs like this to the largest GUI applications. Python's "interoperability" -- how it plays with others -- helps here, too. Python can connect to the graphic toolkits used by C, C++, and Java programmers. Python makes even the most difficult and tedious of these toolkits considerably more tractable.
This flexibility occasionally overwhelms newcomers to the Python language. Java programmers, for example, learn a single set of tools as the one true way to build GUIs with Java. Python, in contrast, offers at least a dozen different toolkits for its projects. Still, there's a clear standard for general-purpose work: the base Python distribution includes the Tkinter graphical extension which works under MacOS, Unix, and Windows.
Python Programming on Win32
The conclusion: there's little good reason in the year 2000 for application developers to struggle with C or C++ when writing GUIs. Python affords productivity that's up to an order of magnitude greater.
Python Does Windows
A final surprise for many Python beginners is its potency for Microsoft Windows programming. Scripting languages like Python are sometimes regarded as "only for Unix" or "restricted to Web applications." In fact it was a Macintosh which hosted the first implementations of Python. Even apart from that historical footnote, portability has always been paramount in the evolution of the language. For several years now, the plurality of Python downloads from the Python home page have been for Windows.
It's not just that Python can run under Windows; it runs well there. Python is an excellent language for COM automation, on both the server and client side. COM (Common Object Model) is a Microsoft technology that means Python can efficiently handle such tasks as "Open a sequence of files as Excel spreadsheets, update certain cells, and print the resulting reports" or "Build a Word macro that uses a Python calculation to prepare a summary document."
As mentioned just above for GUI toolkits, Python is in many ways a better language for Windows application programming interfaces (APIs) than the Visual C++ and Visual Basic sold by Microsoft. This is possible because the crack programmers who maintain Python for Windows have simplified and corrected the rather jumbled "native" APIs. Windows programmers who use Python benefit from a more expressive syntax and more consistent exception-handling, for example.
Python has become so important in the Windows world that Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) articles frequently cite it as an example of a language which can be used with such Microsoft technologies as dynamic HTML (DHTML), the Windows Scripting Host (WSH), and Active Server Pages (ASP).
What's the Catch?
There's not much of a catch. It's just as promised at the beginning of this article: Python has so much going for it that you could well make it the one language in which you do all your work. Even so, it's available at no charge, its downloads are much smaller than those for Java, and its licensing is quite liberal. While there are only a fraction of the books in print for Python as for Java or C++, the Python collection is of high quality. One new book, for instance, is O'Reilly's Python Programming on Win32, whose lead author is the same Mark Hammond who originally programmed so many of Python's Windows features.
Do you want support or training for Python? Several companies in the USA and around the world specialize in Python support and training. Moreover, one of the singular attractions of Python is the help freely given on mailing lists and through the comp.lang.python Usenet newsgroup. Many programmers have told me what first convinced them to try the language were these extraordinary and rewarding resources.
Most reassuring of all, you don't have to take my word for it. Download a Python processor and documentation set, dive into one of the online tutorials, and, in less than an hour from now, you'll know for yourself how programming in Python feels.
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