[Python-Dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library (original) (raw)

David Beazley dave at dabeaz.com
Sun Jul 11 14:16:18 CEST 2010

I would like to propose removing IDLE from the standard library.

-1000. From the Python training department, I would like to say that this would be a horrible idea. Having taught numerous on-site training courses for Python, the one thing that I've learned is that you never know what you're going to get when you show up to teach a course. More often than not, you're thrown into some training room with a bunch of PCs, operated by someone who doesn't know anything about Python at all, and who had a hard enough time installing it in the first place. The fact that IDLE comes with Python means that even in such situations, as long as Python has been installed somewhere, there's going to be at least one halfway-reasonable environment for working with it (although I suppose there are some people who would still prefer to use the Windows command shell and Notepad).

For what it's worth, I think IDLE works fine as a development environment, despite the fact that it has some flaky bits. The most annoying issue that I encounter in classes is people starting IDLE by right-clicking on files. This starts up IDLE without its subprocess and causes all sorts of bizarre problems related to the environment (e.g., restarting, module imports, etc.). Other than that, it's fine.

Cheers, Dave

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