[Idle-dev] /me waves

[Katie Cunningham]

So... wait. Before we continue: You're angry because someone used a
line on my blog to state his dissatisfaction with IDLE? I'm to blame
for starting a conversation about IDLE's issues?

Fair or not, the impression I get from most of the people I talk to is
that they believe IDLE is an abandoned project. When I tell other
Python developers that I use IDLE to teach, they look concerned and
list off other tools I should be using instead. Perhaps that's not
fair. Perhaps it's a problem of outreach, and letting people know that
IDLE is still being worked upon.

You didn't lose a week to me  making a snarky comment. You lost a week
because people really, truly think that nothing is happening in the
IDLE world, and many are embarrassed by it.

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 2:16 AM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 3/21/2013 10:37 AM, Katie Cunningham wrote:
>
> Katie, name-calling, which you did on your blog, and came close to here, is
> not accepted in the Python development community.
>
> You wrote, with respect to IDLE, on a line by itself, without a smiley, with
> blank lines around it, so no one could miss it, the following.
> "
>
> Too bad it's broke as hell.
>
> "
> http://therealkatie.net/blog/2013/mar/19/pycon-2013-young-coders/
>
> A couple of days ago, a Python developer who strongly dislikes IDLE started
> a thread on the pydev (Python developer) list which started with quoting the
> lines before your negative comment and ended with it, leaving out the line
> after. He went on to say that IDLE is quirky, ugly, badly maintained,
> useless, a disgrace to Python, and should be quarantined in a separate
> repository. Others chimed in, like #5 on your blog, 'yeah, IDLE is broken',
> etcetera, etcetera, and opined that IDLE should not be quarantined but
> should be removed from Python altogether.
>
> Whatever your intent, your comment was used as ammunition to block IDLE
> improvement, at least for this week. Perhaps you can understand now why I
> did not think it very funny.
>
> ----
> Now, what was my supposed crime?
>
> First, I parodied your comment. People *do* make exaggerated comments in
> blogs to get attention.
>
>
>> Too bad people exaggerate like hell -- especially in blog posts ;-).
>
>
> Second, I let you know that I was ignorant of what you might have actually
> meant, in any detail.
>
>
>> I use IDLE almost daily and it works for me, especially with some of
>> the more recent fixes. I have worked on IDLE issues on and off for
>> over a year. But I have no idea what *you* think is 'broken as hell'.
>
>
> Third, I invited you here to enlighten me as to your priorities for
> improving IDLE. There are numerous IDLE issue I could work on. I gave you a
> chance to influence my priorities. Let me ask it differently. Based on your
> experience, what IDLE issue most gets in the way of kids just starting out
> with IDLE and Python?
>
>
>> Given your experience teaching with IDLE, I would be very interested
>> in knowing what you think are the top 3 or so outstanding issues. As
>> well as here, you could also post to the idle-dev list,
>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/idle-dev, which is mirrored as
>> gmane.org newsgroup gmane.comp.python.idle.
>
>
> Fourth, I let you know that IDLE has been actively improved, and hopefully
> will be again, which means a) that any released version you might be using
> is obsolete* and b) that 'soon' will be is a good time for others to join in
> on improving it.
>
>
>> You did not specify which Python version you used, but since 3.3.0
>> there have been about 30 patches pushed.  I hope to see than many
>> again in not too many months. You are welcome to join us to help make
>> that happen.
>
>
> * You said on your blog 2.7, which was last released as 2.7.3 last April.
> That means it does not have the fix I committed last summer to fix the
> problem of IDLE sometimes crashing when one typed '('. That was broken. I
> would even agree with 'broken as hell' with respect to that particular
> issue. The fix should be in the 2.7.4 release in about a week.
>
> --
> Terry Jan Reedy
>
>
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