[Python-Dev] IDLE in the stdlib (original) (raw)

Eli Bendersky eliben at gmail.com
Wed Mar 20 17:41:53 CET 2013

Interesting writeup about PyCon 2013 young coder education: http://therealkatie.net/blog/2013/mar/19/pycon-2013-young-coders/

Quote:

"We used IDLE because it's already on Raspian's desktop. Personally, I like IDLE as a teaching tool. It's included in the standard library, it does tab completion and color coding, and it even has a text editor included so you don't have to start your class off by teaching everyone about paths.

Too bad it's broke as hell."

Personally, I think that IDLE reflects badly on Python in more ways than one. It's badly maintained, quirky and ugly. It serves a very narrow set of uses, and does it badly.

Being part of Python distributions and being part of core Python standard library are two different things. The former may make sense, the latter IMHO makes no sense whatsoever. Outside the Python core IDLE can be maintained more freely, with less restrictions on contributors and hopefully become a better tool.

Eli -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20130320/865e1ae5/attachment.html>

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list