suggestion: Python or Java?

Hi all

I have a bit of a dilemma. As a project I'm going to make an error checker for text documents. So I need to use regular expressions, IO facilities and some nice GUI tools. The problem is I have experience with Regular expressions with Python (using NLTK) but no GUI experience. On the other hand, I have experience with making GUIs in Java and using IO as well, but not with natural language stuff.

I've had a look at the APIs, but I'm not sure if I'm looking hard enough, can anyone make some suggestions on which route is better?

Thanks very much in advance!

Which APIs have you looked at?

Python has several GUI frameworks, but Tkinter and wxPython are the most popular by a long shot. If you have done GUI development in Java then you should not have any problem picking either of them up. IO is also a lot simpler in Python, and you won't have to bother with those silly 'anonymous inner classes' that Java uses to get round the lack of function objects, either.

Dave - The Developers' Coach

My dear man, you seem to be looking for some kind of Python - Java half breed ... a kind of Jython you might say... all the power of Pythons beautiful syntax, builtin types and functions with the JVM and Libraries (swig for one). Is this possible you ask?

If you havn't found it already, try: http://www.jython.org/

Have fun ,

Mark.

I was going to suggest that, but if he wants to use NLTK then he is out of luck, since (from my cursory reading of the web site for it) it requires Python 2.3 and the Numeric module.

Dave - The Developers' Coach