[Python-ideas] Have REPL print less by default

[Michael Selik]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 5:36 AM Franklin? Lee <leewangzhong+python at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Apr 19, 2016 4:09 AM, "Paul Moore" <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Basic users should probably be using a tool like IDLE, which has a bit
> > more support for beginners than the raw REPL.
>
> My college had CS students SSH into the department's Linux server to
> compile and run their code, and many teachers don't believe that students
> should start with fancy IDE featues like, er, syntax highlighting.
>
That's probably because your professors thought you were more advanced than
other new Pythonistas, because you were CS students. If I were in their
shoes, I might chose a different approach depending on the level of the
course.

> But that doesn't answer my question: would the proposed change hurt your
workflow?

It might. Would it affect doctests? Would it make indirect infinite
recursion more difficult to trace? Would it make me remember yet another
command line option or REPL option to turn on complete reprs? Would it
force me to explain yet another config setting to new programmers?

I think a beginner understands when they've printed something too big. I
see this happen frequently. They laugh, shake their heads, and retype
whatever they need to.

If they're using IDLE, they say, "OMG I crashed it!" then they close the
window or restart IDLE. I'd say it's more a problem in IDLE than in the
default REPL.
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