[Python-Dev] [Idle-dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library

[Tal Einat]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 1:44 AM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
>> FWIW this is why I started IDLE-Spoon (well, continued Noam Raphael's
>> project of the same name, in a sense). The idea was to have a fork of
>> IDLE with new features which need to be tried out by "beta testers" to
>> iron out all of the glitches before making it into the main version,
>> like IDLE-fork back in the beginning of the decade. However I have
>> utterly failed in promoting this project and getting "beta testers" on
>> board, at least partially due to the lack of interest from the
>> community (and admittedly my lack of PR skills).
>
> I think such a thing must inherently fail - precisely for these reasons.
>
> It's much better to release proposed new features along with Python,
> and wait for feedback. Users won't start trying things out until after
> the release. This is a general problem, and lead Barry Warsaw to believe
> that "release candidates" are an utter waste of time.

That's debatable, and I disagree. IDLE-fork was a great success, for example.

If IDLE actually had many users today, certainly some of them would be
interested in trying out a version with usability fixes and
improvements. Waiting for a new release of Python can take over a
year. Furthermore, backwards compatibility issues and support by third
party libraries can delay migration to a newer version of Python even
further.

- Tal Einat