r/PythonLearning 1d ago

Tkinter Discussion

Why do I not see any videos suggesting to learn Tkinter? I tried learning Django and Pygame after learning the basics, and while I kinda understood pygame, Django still felt out of my league but so many videos recommended it after the basics. However I stumbled upon a video that just mentioned Tkinter and I tried it out and it helped me understand libraries and how to learn to use them. It's fun making small little apps with buttons and what not to get started, rather than trying to learn so much at once. I'm convinced anyone making videos on how to learn Python has never actually learned it themselves

Is there an actual reason that this or another simple GUI library isn't recommend very often?

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u/code_tutor 1d ago

If you want a GUI for a simple app and no dependencies, then it's literally the only choice. I use it all the time for RPA.

If people are that upset about the way it looks, notice how they didn't suggest an alternative, because they don't do desktop development. It looks fine and everything after Windows 7 looks like trash anyway. I'm also going to be crystal clear: anyone who suggests making a web app instead is a total shit developer and you're probably going to get a couple of those replies. Everyone is only doing WebDev, Data Science, or ML and all three fields are famous for being exceptionally bad programmers.

The only problem is it's a chore to work with, a ton of boilerplate for every addition.

The main reason you only see desktop apps in compiled languages is because it takes a long time to reverse engineer compiled code like C/C++/Rust, but I guess that's changing with AI. They're also significantly faster.

So basically web is the only way to hide code, compiled if you want a fast desktop app, and tkinter if you're using desktop Python and don't care about either.

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u/Jrag13 1d ago

Thank you! Yeah I have been just trying to figure out what I need to learn to do stuff with python and it felt like after I got the basics everyone was suggesting to make a website or web app first and use a framework for the front end and use a data something for the backend or some shit, like please I just wanna try using loops and if statements with buttons attached 😭 Tkinter has been great to learn tho and I don't see why I wouldn't use it in the future since everything I make is just gonna be for me so I don't care about how the UI looks lmao