Is python a good choice to build a desktop application? [closed]

Question

I'm wondering if python is a good choice to develop a desktop application for a small business. Is it possible to build something using PyQT or even Swing + Jython ? How I can make a executable file at the end?

Answer 1

I've found Python to be an excellent choice for developing a broad scala of applications including desktop applications. I've developed in C++ for many years, and for parts that are really time critical I sometimes use it still, but for most of my code Python helps me get results much faster. There are several ways to get an executable. Py2exe is one of them, Cython another option allowing easy combination with C++ if you need raw speed, interfacing with 3rd party libaries or low level control of devices. It also makes reverse engineering a bit harder, if that's a concern in your project.

By the way, when I started out with Python I was very concerned about performance and (being a quality manager at that time) almost blocked its introducion in our company for its lack of strickt typing. I was wrong about both. Since especially the rich set of built in datastructures as well as many of its standard modules are written in C++ and have been carefully optimized, it isn't so easy to beat on speed and memory efficiency as one might think. And the dynamic typing (only recently introduced in a language like C#) proved a very powerful means to write concise, readable, reliable and compact code.

I don't have shares (since Python is open source anyhow) but from all the languages I've used in the past (Algol, Pascal, Modula II, Assembler, Basic, Fortran, Cobol, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript) it's the one I prefer rightnow to earn a living with.