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

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Wed Mar 20 18🔞48 CET 2013

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 9:41 AM, Eli Bendersky <eliben at gmail.com> wrote:

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.

Unfortunately, this cannot change until we have a usable installation tool shipping with CPython. Thus, it can only be on the agenda for serious consideration in Python 3.5 at the earliest. In the meantime, any core developers concerned that IDLE reflects badly on Python could go through the tracker issues on bugs.python.org and try to improve the situation for 3.4 (and 3.3.2 and 2.7.5). Feedback on Terry's PEP 434 (explicitly pushing IDLE towards "application that ships with Python that may receive minor enhancements in maintenance releases" status, rather than "no new features whatsoever in maintenance releases") would also be appreciated.

Regards, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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