Rex Schrader
Sep 9, 2018 · 1 min read

While I’m not exactly an “expert” on desktop applications, I have written a few. Tkinter and other GUI modules for Python are not suitable for creating desktop applications. They really exist to add a somewhat prettier front-end to a script. None of the plugins have the power, flexibility, or configuration needed to make a desktop application of any complexity.

Python itself, GUIs aside, is not really designed for desktop applications because, as an interpreted language, it lacks the infrastructure to make stand-alone applications. While it is possible to bundle/package Python scripts, this is more of a hack than anything.

Javascript is unusual in as that it is fairly lightweight and there are various frameworks such as Electron and React-Native that allow you to write a cross-platform application in Javascript. Python does not have this sort of framework and due to its roots, is unlikely to have one anytime soon.

Python IS great as a swiss army knife/utility language for scripting, automation, and science tasks, as you note.

    Rex Schrader

    Written by