I can't find (with very little effort) any documentation of this, but I have a vague recollection that the core devs want to keep the built-in REPL really simple -- more advanced features are for third party packages like iPython.

I tend to agree -- while something like this: "making the built-in repl more friendly t copy-and-paste from examples" seems like a no brainer, the fact is that there are a LOT of features that would make it easier for newbies, and in the end, you'd end up with something like iPython.

Honestly, Python does "suffer" a bit when in competition with commercial products, in that it is a language (and an implementation of that language), not an entire programming environment. So to use it, you need to figure out which Editor or IDE you want to use, what debugger, etc.....

And the REPL, while being pretty key to interactive data analysis, is not a key feature of programming languages in general, even interpreted ones.

So the solution is: use a third party solution for a complete environment suitable for your needs. For instance, for people doing data analysis, I recommend Anaconda -- then you get iPython and JUpyter (and Spyder) out of the box -- and away we go.

maybe it's worth a note t pyton-dev to confirm my vague impression (or some more thorough googling for previous discussions) -- but I wouldn't put much effort into ideas for the REPL without confirming that the core dev are open to the concept.

-CHB