> I would like to propose removing IDLE from the standard library. > > I have been using IDLE since 2002 and have been doing my best to help > maintain and further develop IDLE since 2005.
I'm surprised by the amount of interest this has raised already. To answer a few questions that were raised: In recent years I have worked up many patches, both bugfixes and new features and improvements. Getting any attention to these was non-trivial, and getting patches accepted (or an explanation why they are rejected in some cases) almost always took many months, sometimes years, and some are still unresolved. It has been very frustrating. When I ran into bugs I fixed them and submitted a patch. I have also done so for quite a few bugs reported by others. However, there are currently several bugs in the tracker which nobody is taking any notice of. IIRC most of the recent bugs are related to OSX or 64-bit Windows. To those who mention that IDLE is "okay" or "not going uphill", my grandfather would say "if you aren't running forwards, you are falling behind." You should know how IDLE looks to programmers seeing it for the first time -- IDLE's quirky and old-fashioned looks and interface are a major turnoff for new users. As a result I have stopped recommending it to coworkers, despite personally liking IDLE, instead recommending the basic command-line or IPython for interactive work, and any other IDE or text editor for development. I too prefer IDLE to the basic command line, and think that something like IDLE is well-suited for learning/teaching Python. I also think an interpreter with a nice GUI can be far superior to a text-only interpreter. However, I've mostly lost hope for IDLE, and am currently hoping that something else takes its place. The fact is that for many years little effort has gone into developing and maintaining IDLE, and I believe being tucked in a corner of the Python codebase is a major reason for this. I really don't see why IDLE has to be part of the standard library, what's wrong with IDLE being an externally maintained application? Yes, IDLE still works (mostly), but us few who continue to use it could do so even if it weren't part of the standard library. - Tal Einat _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
