Python education survey

[Rick Johnson]

On Dec 25, 9:27 pm, Chris Angelico <ros... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 4:44 AM, Rick Johnson
> > [...]
> Conversely, why write an IDE into IDLE when perfectly-good IDEs
> already exist? I don't use IDLE for development per se; it's for
> interactive Python execution, but not editing of source files.

I believe the answer is two fold:

1. Including an IDE like IDLE into the Python distro helps noobs to
get started quickly without needing to traverse a gauntlet of unknown
IDEs on their own. If later they find something that they feel is more
appropriate; so be it.

2. (and most important to me... IDLE is written in Python using the
Tkinter GUI (which ships with python also). Therefore, the source code
for IDLE can be a GREAT teaching resource for how to write
professional Tkinter applications. I KNOW THE CURRENT SOURCE SUCKS!
However, we could change that.

So, with those points being covered, i believe IDLE is very important
to the Python community and could be useful to more people IF we clean
it up a bit. It's really a great little IDE with even greater
potential. If Guido would just say something (or at least some of the
top Pythionistas (Hettinger i am looking at you!)) this community
might work together to fix this problem.