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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T00:35:56+00:00

Summerfield’s Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt. I love the book in general.

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Summerfield’s “Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt”. I love the book in general. The first few chapters are the best Python primer I found online or otherwise, and the examples are varied and helpful (not perfect though, there’s some padding and retracing for sure- it could be far more direct).

My problem is that I feel I might be picking up bad habits from it. Instead of just dynamically assigning new attributes to existing object, the author uses “setData” functions, special MIMEData slots and whatnot. Here’s a good example from one of the first questions I asked on Stackoverflow:

Setting and getting "data" from PyQt widget items?

or, for instance, in a page-designer app:

def writeItemToStream(self, stream, item):
    if isinstance(item, QGraphicsTextItem):
        stream << QString("Text") << item.pos() \
               << item.matrix() << item.toPlainText() << item.font()
    elif isinstance(item, QGraphicsPixmapItem):
        stream << QString("Pixmap") << item.pos() \
               << item.matrix() << item.pixmap()
    elif isinstance(item, BoxItem):
        stream << QString("Box") << item.pos() \
               << item.matrix() << item.rect
        stream.writeInt16(item.style)

Am I right to think the author’s C++/Qt background might make his examples sub-optimal? Or should I keep trying to make sense of a lot of his choices?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You have to remember that PyQt4 is a binding to Qt. A lot of what is done in one, is the same in the other, for API compatability.

    Obviously C++ is a static typed language and python allows you to simply assign attributes to object, but dont confuse that with something like a setData call. Normally those calls set internal members that are not exposed to you. This is where the binding aspect makes sense. In order for the C++ objects to get the interaction they expect, you would usually need to make use of the same api in pyqt

    One example of something very C++ related is the QVariant. It is an object that can represent many many different types. Python doesnt normally need this kind of object, but C++ would to hold dynamic types in one object. You will have to deal with this object when you work with say QSettings, or the model/view components.

    That book is an excellent learning tool and I would recommend not thinking about picking up bad habits. Mark knows what needs to be taught for an understanding of PyQt. As you learn python in general, you will easily be able to make these distinctions down the line.

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