[pypy-dev] Paul Fernhout wants edit-and-continue in python

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Sat Mar 31 23:12:52 CEST 2007


| From: "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com>
| User-Agent: Icedove 1.5.0.9 (X11/20061220)


| I started to look into seeing how "edit and continue" could be addressed
| with Python, but, especially given Guido saying it was "impossible", and
| looking in the email archives of various lists to see it has been
| brought up multiple times on comp.lang.python and such and shot down,
|   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=python+%22edit+and+continue%22
| it seems it might be easier to build something from scratch which
| supports it (on top of Java using those libraries) than to try (and
| fail) to improve Python. I also have always preferred Smalltalk keyword
| syntax over Python, as it is easily extensible (and easily readable (to
| me), so there are always forces tugging me towards creating
| alternatives, which people here will rightfully say stand a snowball's
| chance of seeing widespread adoption.
|
| The bottom line on "Edit and continue" is that making it work properly
| likely requires deep thinking and understanding about the entire Python
| runtime system (as well as getting pickup of your changes by various IDE
| developers), and Python as a system has moved so far along the
| development curve that coming from a standing start up to an
| understanding of Python's current internals necessarily beyond that of
| Guido (who says it is impossible :-) is likely a long hard effort.

In one of his artima blogs on Pycon2007, Guido says that the 
OneLaptopPerChild people who attended put a similar request to him and 
persuaded him to start rethinking hard about improving the situation.  So 
he is at least working on making reload more usefule.  I have no idea how 
far he has gotten in the month since.

tjr






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