Hello Eric – and QtPy (UI for Python)
I went ahead and got the Eric IDE to start a bit of a project with some UI involved. I found a nice tutorial for a parser.
Of course, it would be too easy to install it on Windows – so, I did it all on my netbook… first things first. Don’t do that for production… A 1024 * 512 resolution is too small – there are a few glitches with the IDE as the menus are a bit too large – so, it jumps around a bit, but I still managed to get through the tutorial. Coming out on the other side – I’m really impressed by Pythons capabilities for making clean, compact code – and having concluded the tutorial – I now know how to:
- Install a few missing packages (Needed a Qt Designer and a compiler for the xml that Qt Designer generates).
- Install and setup Subversion repositories and use that together with the IDE.
- Some small time UI-developement – of course only brushed the surface there.
And I actually understand the Python code. Comparing it with back when I started C# coding… well, it’s an unfair competition – it took me several weeks to get this far. The reason that it is unfair, is that I learned OO-programming whilst learning C#. Picking up the 4th language even though it is dynamic is a lot easier. It’s a lot of fun programming in Python – it’s basically learning a few rules (line indents matter, interfaces are meaningless) and then you’re off writing small programs.
Oh – and for those wondering, these are the languages, I know:
- VBA – Excel primarily back when MS Office was called 2000/2002
- XAL Basic – Scripting language in Microsofts Dynamics products
- C#
- Python
Of those, I would be hard-pressed to anything really usefull in VBA these days (and C64 BASIC, batch file scripting and VB-scripts didn’t make the list although I’ve done it, but I could probably only edit and read them now). I like learning new languages (and come September, I’ll start learning Spanish…)