“IronPython + .NET” vs “Python + PyQt”. Which one is better for Windows App development?

Question

I\'m new in using Python. I would like to develop Windows GUI Application using Python. After some research, I found that I have 2 options:-

1. IronPython + .NET Fram

Answer 1

Per my play with both PyQt (as interface to Qt) and IronPython (as an interface to WinForms) the bag is mixed.

Both are basically "bindings" for underlying platforms. PyQt is practically "autogenerated" from Qt's API and slightly more "mature" as a wrapper because of significant use on Linux.

IronPython goes a little deeper and seems to "rebox" system objects with small unfilled gaps between cPython and .Net libs (gzip, zip, subprocess etc).

In both cases, you need to look through Python into the toolkit and say to yourself if you like the toolkit. All python is doing is repackaging the toolkit's API to the objects. Again, forget about Python aspect. Look at the underlying toolkit API and think to yourself if you can live with that.

I personally find the C++ nature of Qt's API too un-pythonic to be happy with it. C# and Python are so alike that if you remove curlies and type declaration from C# you would not know if it's C# or Python. As a result, for a Python programmer, C#-based .Net API, code and examples as provided in MSDN and elsewhere are instantly applicable with very minor tweaks.

In the end, a more correct comparison would be between PyQt (Qt bindings for cPython) and Win32py (Windows ABI bindings for cPython). IronPython is almost a reinvention of same language on a different platform, with all the problems (lacking functionality) that comes with that.