Getting started with GUI - Python beginner

Question

I still consider myself a beginner in programming, and after countless hours of courses and online exercises, this is the first more or less 'real' program I have been given to write, that will be used by real users (yay!). The aim is to write a simple archiving programme (automatically archive some data bases in regular intervals), the programme should be in .exe format and always be running in the background. After reading about all the various types of Python GUI frameworks, I decided to ask the experienced community to check if e.g. wxPython is suitable for a beginner for a simple GUI interface, or would you recommend another one?

Also, does it make sense first to write the script for the program and later 'insert' it in the GUI framework (I hope this makes sense), or should these two things be coded hand in hand?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Frankly, it very much depends on what you're intending to build -- since you specified what seems to be a relatively simple GUI, I'd recommend beginning with Tkinter because it's the only GUI-related package that ships in python's standard library, and thus it is relatively ubiquitous for simple python apps.

It's not the most elegant package, and certainly does not handle complex GUIs well, but it's a great place to start playing with python GUIs.

Because you specified this is relatively new to you, I'd recommend reviewing the Model View Controller model (MVC) as a way of conceptualizing how your app will function in the context of the GUI. Put in an oversimplified way, it's best practice to integrate the GUI (view) with the model (variables and functions) and the controller (that which mediates the interaction between the "backend" and "frontend" of your app).

So to answer your question: it's generally not good practice to "tack on" a GUI at the last minute. Far better to think about how it functions in something like a MVC model.