C# or Python for my app

Question

Hi,

I have the task of developing an application to pull data from remote REST services and generating Excel reports. This application will be used by a handful of users at the company (10-15). The data load can reach 10,000-200,000 records. I have been debating whether to use Python or C#...

The only reason I am considering Python is because I am familiar with it and it would be less of a risk.

Personally I want to try use C# since this would be a good opportunity to learn it. The application is not too complicated so the overhead of learning it won't be too much... I think.

Are there any issues with C# that I should be concerned about for this type of program? The users run Windows XP... would users not having .NET installed be a major concern?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I guess I need to stress the fact that the end users should be able to run the application without installing additional libraries/frameworks.

Answer 1

I would normally say, use what you know.

However, here you may have some performance issues using an interpreted language. I, myself, would use C#. If you want to learn it, now is as good of a time as any.

However, if your own cost/benefit analysis reveals that you would be better off in python, use that.

.NET will be required for C# on windows, but you can use the .NET Client Profile to make the install pretty painless.

Answer 2

If the users have to install a C# client then not having .NET installed would be an issue. You can package the installer so it downloads the .NET runtime, but depending on what features you use it could be quite a big download.

If your application is web based then all the C# code runs on the server and just delivers HTML to the browser so whether .NET is installed or not shouldn't matter.

Answer 3

If you want to learn C# and you don't have such a limited time constraint, now might be a good time to try it. Also, though I haven't done Excel work with either Python or C#, I would expect it to be easier to work with Excel files with a Microsoft product rather than Python. If you're just dumping data in CSV format to a file, though, either Python or C# will work fine.

If you want to try something even crazier, you can use IronPython such that you'll have .NET resources available but you can still write in Python.

Answer 4

Why not IronPython which merges the two worlds together?

Answer 5

Integration with Excel will almost certainly be simpler from C#. Given the requirements "Windows only" and "Integrates with Excel", it would seem a simple choice that C# is better suited to this individual problem.

And, no, users' not having .NET is not a concern compared with Python as the alternative. The Dot Net framework is a standard part of Microsoft Update. In contrast, Python will almost certainly not be there on the average end users' machine. In your case, with an internal app, that last point might not matter of course.

Answer 6

If you are doing any kind of HTTP work with C# make sure you take a look at the new HttpClient library that is in WCF REST Starter Preview2. Ignore the name of that download, the HttpClient part can be used independently of WCF.

It is a WAY better client than just using HttpWebRequest.

Answer 7

If you do a web based application not having installed .NET in the client machine wont be a problem .. but I suppose you dont want to try both C# and web development at the same time

Answer 8

It is easy with Python to pull data from a web server, parse the JSON or XML, and generate some kind of report. If you need really good Excel integration (for example, your output is supposed to be an Excel spreadsheet that includes numerous graphs) C# might be better, but Python is still possible; there is PyExcelerator for writing rich spreadsheet files, and there is Python support for COM if you want to use COM to talk to Excel.

With Python it is also very easy to make a stand-alone executable, for example with py2exe.

This sounds like a batch tool, one that won't have a GUI; I think I would write it in Python if I were you, unless I really wanted a fun project to help me learn C#. But anything with a GUI, C# is probably better. (I haven't done GUI development with Python, but I have seen comments here and elsewhere that the performance of Python GUIs tend to be slow.)

Answer 9

The answer probably has more to do with the circumstances than the question of which is the better language for the task at hand.

If you have no prior C# experience, it's probably not a good idea to jump into it now and learn it as you go along. Syntax differences are trivial to learn, mastery is defined by knowing the dirty details and how to use the language's strengths to get the job done.

If you have plenty of time and starting over a lot is NOT an issue, or you have experience with a language that is paradigmatically very similar to C# (say, Java or C++), you could probably afford to take the risk and adapt to the new language very quickly.

If you don't care about efficiency (e.g. it's a pet project, you don't care much about your job or efficiency simply isn't important), try C# just to learn something new (always a good thing) or stick to Python to make sure you won't have to adjust your thinking too much (always a source of vulnerabilities and misunderstandings).

If you definitely want to use C#, you should play around with it in your "free time" (not necessarily at home, but preferably at work when there's nothing else to do) and thus build a skillset you can use once you have to start with the actual project. This way you'll already be familiar with the paradigm (to use the term loosely) and encounter less problems where they count.