What Eiffelers can learn from the Python community

[Finnian Reilly]

It used to be that the Python community relied on something called TkInter for their GUI needs. This can be thought of as the Vision2 of the Python world, as for a long time it was the defacto GUI SDK for Python. But then along came WxPython, a Python interface to WxWidgets. It took a while, but eventually WxPython consigned TkInter to the history books. Now the Python community is so proud of WxPython that you can even buy a T-shirt with Wxwidgets on it and there are a number of books in print on how to program with WxPython.

Wxpython in Action

wxPython 2.8 Application Development Cookbook

Python GUI Programming Cookbook

Here is what Python progammers are saying about WxWidgets

"Why the hell hasn't wxPython become the standard GUI for Python yet?"
-- Eric S. Raymond

"wxPython is the best and most mature cross-platform GUI toolkit, given a number of constraints. The only reason wxPython isn't the standard Python GUI toolkit is that Tkinter was there first."
-- Guido van Rossum

"Tkinter is dead, Java is dead, wxPython rules! That's all there is to say."
-- Robert Roebling

"I've written some rather involved applications with Python/Tkinter. wxPython beats it hands down... The widgets are better (being based on GTK for Linux) and the class setup is immediately useable. wxPython gives me a good reason to never even worry about using Java."
-- Aaron Rhodes

"The Python community needs to give up on Tcl and come join us. wxPython is wonderful stuff."
-- David Priest

"BTW, great work! I've definitively switched from Tk. I work on Win32, anybody who works on Win32 should switch!"
-- Michel Orengo

"I have just picked myself up off the floor having looked at the wxHTML stuff in the new beta! wxPython is moving from excellent to completely awesome very quickly indeed."
-- Sean McGrath

"Thanks for such fantastic work on wxPython. As a newcomer to Python the power of this GUI library blows me away. I will never use anything else."
-- Mark Evans

"This toolkit has transformed the way I work."
-- Dr. Daniel B. Koch

So why can't the Eiffel community follow a proven good idea. Well, there was an attempt made, but it didn't get much traction and fell into a digital crevice. I think it might be because we have fallen into the "sunk cost trap". Python programmers are not attached to any particular IDE (they have many to choose from and quite a few Python programmers just use a basic text editor) But in the Eiffel community, using EiffelStudio has become an integral part of Eiffel programming for most of us, and a lot of time (and money) was invested in making EiffelStudio work with Vision2. So to keep the GUI aspects of EiffelStudio maintained and also to work on OSX we need to continue with Vision2 or some improved version of it. But is this not the tail wagging the dog? Is EiffelStudio on a Mac more important then a first rate mature cross platform GUI with native support for GTK, Windows and OSX, and supported by over one hundred contributers?

-- Finnian
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