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

Bruce Sherwood basherwo at ncsu.edu
Sun Jul 11 23:58:32 CEST 2010

Perhaps there are two separable issues. Many of us see it as extremely important that some IDLE be part of the standard Python distribution ("batteries included"), for the reasons that several people have given. However, there is merit to the suggestion to have an active separate development, with the understanding that periodically this separate development is a candidate for inclusion in the standard distribution, replacing whatever IDLE had been there.

In the 2009 Google Summer of Code I was the mentor for a Brazilian student, Guilherme Polo, who completed and extended important improvements to IDLE made during the previous year by David Scherer. Given the somewhat official nature of this work, I assumed that these needed improvements would make it into the standard distribution, but as far as I know that hasn't happened. It would seem that if even this "sponsored" project didn't impact the standard Python distribution, something is broken in the procedures, and probably what is needed is, as Guido says, that someone be given the authority to get improvements to IDLE into the standard distribution. Making a significant change to the update procedures is clearly needed.

Even if this needed change is made, there is also merit to Tai's suggestion of creating a separate project, to encourage developers like him to work together to improve IDLE, without having as a first priority to worry about getting it into the standard distribution, but with the clear understanding that this is the place to go for improvements to migrate into the standard distribution.

Bruce Sherwood

P.S. I'll add that IDLE has been EXTREMELY important for a large population of relatively casual users of Python, the thousands of science and engineering university students enrolled in the "Matter & Interactions" intro physics curriculum developed by Ruth Chabay and me ( matterandinteractions.org). A major feature of this curriculum is a serious introduction to computational modeling, in which students write short Python programs to model physical systems. Computational modeling is now central to all of science and engineering but alas has not made its way into undergraduate curricula in an institutionalized way.

A big difficulty is that students come to college knowledgeable about all aspects of computers save one: programming. So the programming environment has to be exceptionally easy to learn and use. Python itself has the necessary properties, and Python+Visual (called VPython, vpython.org) lets the students focus on the physics while VPython generates real-time navigable 3D animations of the computational models, as a side effect of the computational code.

IDLE has proved to be the right editing tool for this population, as essentially nothing needs to be learned, and there is near-instantaneous edit/run transitions which encourage rapid testing. In a physics course we have to focus on strict minimalism as far as the programming is concerned. We teach a bare minimum of needed concepts; for example, we introduce while loops but not for loops. We cannot afford to teach about a professional IDE; IDLE is fine and has worked well for us. (We're currently bundling with VPython the Scherer/Polo version of IDLE, which for reasons of clarity we're calling VIDLE.)

A final personal note is that while I use Eclipse for working on the Visual module, which is written in C++, I find VIDLE a delightful environment for developing Python programs for physics education. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20100711/d2edbfa5/attachment-0001.html>

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