[SGVLUG] Python Programming

Joel Witherspoon joel.witherspoon at gmail.com
Mon Sep 29 11:28:11 PDT 2008


Well, my interest is cosmetic. The interface is kludgy and, unless you
understand computer systems, difficult to navigate. I judge how well my 17
and 12 year old do with these softwares and on MythTV they didn't do well.
Although, the did pretty good with LinuxMCE with "Sarah" walking them
through the process.

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Rae Yip <rae.yip at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry for sitting on this one. Python is a pretty decent language,
> improving in functionality all the time. I like it because it makes
> simple projects easy (and hard projects possible).
>
> One thing it is not is high-performance, at least not without some
> optimisation. This is not to say it's slow (it's comparable with perl
> speeds), but if you have tight loops that you need to call many times,
> it may be better to write a module in C (or use Cython or Pyrex), and
> leave the high-level logic to Python.
>
> You also need to watch out for circular references, especially in
> long-running code. These can easily develop into memory leaks if not
> handled properly.
>
> That said, what is your goal with MythTV? Just to replace the TV and
> recording menus, or do you want to change the TV viewer (this may
> include the OSD)? The latter might not be best done in pure Python.
>
> In any case, I'd be interested in what you'd like to change - I also
> have some peeves with MythTV but I've been using it so long I can't
> really think of better ways to do things.
>
> Also, MythTV's frontend has a lot of good things, but stability could
> be improved, for one. I haven't dug into it because the code's a bit
> of a mess, and it would take much effort for a single person to
> rewrite.
>
> One final thing: Python has many different graphics APIs available,
> but the most mature are probably wxPython and Pygame. I don't know if
> wxPython allows a full-screen mode; Pygame definitely does, but you
> may need to make your own GUI widgets (necessary anyway if you're
> going for a unique look).
>
> -Rae.
>
> On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 6:37 AM, Joel Witherspoon
> <joel.witherspoon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > After seeing Michael's rousing presentation on Myth TV and using it for a
> > few weeks, I'm interested in developing a new front-end for Linux MCE or
> > Myth TV using Python. I've never used Python, so I'm wondering if you all
> > have any pitfall stories or good experiences using it.
> >
>
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