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

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Thu Mar 21 04:32:38 CET 2013

On 3/20/2013 12:41 PM, Eli Bendersky wrote:

Personally, I think that IDLE reflects badly on Python in more ways than one. It's badly maintained, quirky and ugly.

Ugly is subjective: by what standard and compared to what?

I suggested in my previous response why I think 'badly maintained' is untrue and/or unfair. Dismissing the recent work that has been done does not help.

There are 20 open issues with smtp(lib) in the title. It is 37 kb, making .54 issues per kb. For idlelib, with 786 kb, there are 104 issues, or .13 issues per kb, which is one fourth as many. I could claim that smtplib, based on 1990s RFCs is much worse maintained. It certainly could use somee positive attention.

What current quirks, not already the subject of a tracker issue, are you thinking of?

It serves a very narrow set of uses,

Relative to the computing universe, yes. It focuses on editing and running Python code.

and does it badly.

As a user, I rate it at least 'good'. Most of the tracker issues hardly affect me, and many or most of the worst problems for me have already been fixed. What IDE would you suggest as a simple, install and go, alternative? It should have the following features or something close:

Right click on a line like

File "C:\Programs\Python33\lib\difflib.py", line 1759, ... and then left click on the goto popup to go to that line in that file, opening the file if necessary.

As of 3.3.0, this last feature was not documented, at least not in the Idle Help file. Since then, it has been.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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