A Python Ate My GUI
Thoughts on the future of Python and graphical interfaces
Staring at my coworkers, already knowing the inevitability of the situation, my eyes roll as the argument starts anew:
“I told you I can write that code twice as fast, in half as many lines and they’ll be cleaner and more readable than yours will ever be! Python is awesome!” — said the one guy.
“Whatever you say, you’ll never be able to make a UI that’s half as good as this. It won’t look pretty and no one will want to use it!” — replied the other — “Probably can’t even make it run on Windows” — he mumbled to himself while walking away.
Some years ago this was a regular exchange between coworkers, and while they were mostly messing around, there was still an element of truth to it. Regardless of its capabilities, Python was mostly known as a “scripting” language — not really for graphical interfaces — and the world was still looking for a native OS feel in their GUI applications, which was not really accessible from Python without a lot of work.
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