Unbiased opinions please

Hello all,

Been a loooong time since I was here, anyway I have a question and I figured you guys are the ideal people to ask.

I saw Pythonista on the AppStore and I’m wondering if I should take the plunge and buy it? Before you say buy Codea, I bought that long ago and after several months of trying to figure it out, I just called it a day and deleted it. (Not blaming Codea, I’m just too thick/uneducated to learn it)

To the people that know (or have both) is Pythonista easier to learn than Codea?

Thank you.

It mainly depends on the programming language. I prefer Codea because it uses Lua, which uses a lot of english keywords rather than symbols, but Pythonista uses Python, whose scope depends on white space, and uses a lot more non-letter characters. There’s also the implementation of the API, where again, I prefer Codea because of its simplicity with the setup, draw, and touched functions. Pythonista’s implementation is a bit more complicated, with multiple touch functions, no specific draw function, etc. I don’t think Pythonista supports 3D or shaders, and I’m not sure about sockets, but if you’re not interested in getting that advanced, it shouldn’t be a problem. There are a few bonuses to Pythonista’s API, however, such as access to the native iOS GUI. If you care about support, though, I hear Pythonista’s forums are much less active than Codea’s, which means less people to help if you have a problem you can’t solve.

(I own both Codea and Python and these are my opinions, overall I like Codea better - in addition to its forums, API, implementation, features, etc. it also takes up significantly less space, which is a big factor for me because I made the mistake of getting a 16 GB iPad.)

Edit: Pythonista is also available on iPhone, which Codea is not, but the keyboard is significantly smaller so it might be difficult to work.

I think it depends on what you’re using it for. Pythonista is probably better for business and productivity apps, while Codea is designed specifically for graphic animation apps and games.

i have both. If you program just for fun and leasure, Codea is more fun (results come quicker). Pythonista is more powerfull (many libraries) but less pleasure.

in my opinion, it is very easy to understand and learn Codea, and my English is not very good, you could start with small code, actually i often copy and paste small code on forum for studying, if i strive and there is no interference, i surely will be Codea ace or master

I’ve had Pythonista sitting on my iPad for ages, but I’ve never really done anything with it. I put that down to the absence of community support! If there was a Pythonista equivalent to coolcodea…

@yojimbo2000 +1

@Mene I don’t know if you’re after Pythonista or just another language to program in, but have you looked at techBasic.

Pythonista has good and bad points relative to Codea, but I don’t think there’s any doubt Pythonista has a steeper learning curve if you’re a non-programmer approaching the product for the first time.

Thanks for your honest thoughts guys, I’ve decided not to buy it.
@dave1707 thanks, I’ll have a look at that.
(What I wanted to create was a card game based on a normal 52 card pack. I’ll certainly check out techbasic, might be just what I need)

@Mene - to be honest I’d say stick with Codea - it’s actually a very simple app to get into, and as you can see the community really makes the difference.

Start simple, practice writing simple programs that just output via the print statement, then SLOWLY build up to your app - taking it one step at a time. If you want to write a game then Codea is your best bet, it’s modelled on the same principals that power all games (the notion of a single setup function and a draw function that’s called once per video frame to draw the current “state” of the game).

The graphics engine behind Codea is actually very simple to get started but under the hood is quite powerful and will grow with you as your ability improves.

I’ve not seen techBasic (other than it’s sales page - but the $50 price tag put me off :)) from what I can see it’s geared more towards apps and has hooks to the native iOS UI controls (which Codea doesn’t, but the one’s you actually need are very simple to create for yourself - or there’s plenty of example code on the forum).

Also there isn’t a LOT of difference between BASIC and Lua - but if you concentrate on the “basic’s” of sequence, selection and iteration (ie doing one thing after another in order, making a choice as to which sequence of instructions you want to execute, and repeating a sequence of instructions multiple times) then the language doesn’t really matter.

Just my $0.02

I think the power of Codea is in its inclusion of OpenGL (graphics) and Box2D (physics), along with the concept of the draw function running 60 times a second. Lua being a nice language to work with, is icing on the cake.

@Techdojo been there, done that. When I first bought Codea I spent 3-4 months trying to understand it but it’s over my head. I would like something simpler :wink:

Anyway I think this thread has come an end, thanks to everyone who helped.

@TechDojo Is techBASIC really $50. When I bought it, I think I paid around $10 and got it just to see what it was like. When I look at it on the App Store, I don’t see a price since I already have it. I played with it for awhile, but I think Codea is easier to use.

I see a £10.99 version of techBasic and a free trial version that has a £10.99 in app purchase called “editing”. I read a review that said there was a further IAP to unlock export, but that review was a few years old, could be out of date.

TechBasic is $15, same as Codea