Geekery

Well, today I did something that I've never done before. I wrote a Windows program. Nothing fancy, just something simple to test my understanding of the tutorials. It merged together several tutorials to make a slightly more complex whole which was completely GUI-based. Some of the tutorials relied on sending text output to the Python console from the GUI, which seemed less useful to me, so I redirected them to a small text entry field within the GUI itself.

It worked on the first try. No debugging necessary.

I feel like I've broken through a block and really begun to advance my programming skills for the first time in a long while. But I'm a bit dissatisfied still. Python is a great language for my needs. It's similarity to BASIC and easy adaptability to Windows programming, combined with its portability to other Operating Systems is just fantastic. But the fact that it's an interpreted language is a serious drawback, in my opinion. I want to work with a language where I can build programs, compile them, and then send the compiled programs to my friends or share them online. Not force people to download the interpreter for the language if they want to see the programs I write.

At this point, I'm thinking either C++ or Pascal (or possibly Delphi) is going to be the way that I'll have to go, but I worry as I've had difficulty with some aspects of C++ programming for the past several years while attempting to learn it, and Pascal seems fairly similar (though that may be a mistaken impression due to the Pascal IDE I've used being made by the same company that the C++ IDE I've used was made by.)

Ultimately I want a language which is powerful enough to use to make real applications such as browsers, chat clients, and email clients in a GUI environment, but which doesn't require the rediculous amount of complex code to produce very basic program GUIs that C++ seems to. I want a language where I can begin to produce basic GUI-based programs while still learning the more complex or esoteric features of the language, and preferably I want a language which has a history of supporting open source initiatives.

Maybe I'm asking too much with all of these points, but Python seems to provide all of them. If it weren't for it being an interpreted language rather than compiled, I would likely have finally found a language that would be perfect for me.

I guess I'll go take a look at C++ again... perhaps there is something that I'm missing currently which would clear up the apparent complexity surrounding C++ GUI programming. Maybe my experience learning to use the basic features of Python and the Tkinter toolkit will help reveal the mistakes I've made with the way I have previously approached C++.

And, at any rate, if I fuck up C++ again I can always switch back to Python and gain experience with more advanced programming in an interpreted language that seems more suited to my mindset.