On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 7:30 AM, Terry Reedy <tjre...@udel.edu> wrote: > That is something of a problem as people 'graduate' to multi-language > environments. However, while I have programmed in about 20 languages during > my lifetime, I have now 'contracted' to using only Python (except for the > occasional .bat file). So I use Idle to work on both my own stuff and on > fixing Idle. When I notice an issue while working on an issue, I file a new > issue.
Glad to hear it. Best way to make sure Idle stays developed is for its core developers to actively use it. For myself, though, I completely do not use the editor half of it; but it's spectacularly useful (with limitations) as my primary interactive interpreter. That's partly because, on Windows, the command-line interpreter absolutely *sucks* (because most of its UI comes from cmd.exe - my view might be different if I had a different shell, but there's no point because Idle just blows it away), and partly because command recall/editing works on entire syntactic units rather than on lines. In fact, if I were to name *one single feature* that made Idle useful rather than a mere toy, it would have to be the ability to recall an entire function/class definition from command history for further editing. That is hugely helpful to me. It's what makes Python actually 100% usable in interactive mode - go right ahead, define functions and classes just as you would in a file! (Okay, you have to watch out about blank lines. Not usually an issue, but you'll possibly notice that I seldom have any internal blanks when I post a class definition on-list - it's because I usually write them in Idle.) The only problem I have with it is that blatting ridiculous amounts of text to the console can take a very long time, esp on Windows. If I accidentally display a large object when I thought I was displaying a small one, it'll hang for quite a while, churning through something, and it's not easy to see why or to halt it. But I suspect that's more of a Windows and/or Tk issue than an Idle one. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list