[Idle-dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library

[Tal Einat]

Hello,

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.

In recent years IDLE has received negligible interest and attention from the
Python community. During this time IDLE has slowly gone downhill. The
documentation and tutorials grow increasingly out of date. Cross-platform
support has degraded with the increasing popularity of OSX and 64-bit
platforms. Bugs take months, and sometimes more than a year, to be solved.
Features that have since become common-place, such as having a non-intrusive
search box instead of a dialog, are obviously and painfully lacking, making
IDLE feel clumsy and out-dated.

For these reasons, I think it would be fitting to remove IDLE from the
standard library. IDLE is no longer recommended to beginners, IMO rightfully
so, and this was the main reason for its inclusion in the standard library.
Furthermore, if there is little or no interest in developing and maintaining
IDLE, it should be removed to avoid having buggy and badly supported
software in the standard library.

- Tal Einat
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