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

Eli Bendersky eliben at gmail.com
Thu Mar 21 13:25:57 CET 2013

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:42 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

On 3/20/2013 11:54 PM, Eli Bendersky wrote:

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 8:32 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu

Ugly is subjective: by what standard and compared to what? Compared to other existing Python IDEs and shells which are layered on top of modern GUI toolkits that are actively developed to keep with modern standards, unlike Tk which is frozen in the 1990s. I think being frozen in the late 1990s is better than being frozen in the early 1980s, like Command Prompt is. In fact, I think we should 'deprecate' the Command Prompt interpreter as the standard interactive interpreter and finish polishing and de-glitching IDLE's Python Shell, which runs on top of the windowless version of CP with a true GUI. Then we can promote and present the latter as the preferred interface, which for many people, it already is.

There are two discussions being held in parallel here:

  1. Whether IDLE should be developed separately from the core Python repository (while still being shipped).
  2. Whether IDLE is bad in a general sense and should die.

I've stated several times now that it's (1) that I'm interested in. (2) is too subjective, and frankly I'm not in a good position to argue from an objective point of view. As Antoine mentioned, "feeling" should not be dismissed (especially if it resonates from a number of developers). That said, I'm not going to continue to talk about (2). I really want to constructively focus on (1).

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