Tkinter: The good, the bad, and the ugly!

[Octavian Rasnita]

From: "Steven D'Aprano" <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info>
Subject: Re: Tkinter: The good, the bad, and the ugly!


> On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 15:41:41 -0800, Adam Skutt wrote:
> 
>> If you're going to expect me to be that pedantic, then pay me the
>> courtesy of taking the time to find the necessary context. Nevertheless,
>> it's not the least bit unreasonable to address deficiencies in the
>> standard library as deficiencies in the language, like it or not;
> 
> I'm afraid that's precisely what I'm arguing you *can't* do -- there's 
> nothing reasonable about equating the standard library with the language. 
> Some languages don't even have a standard library, or for that matter a 
> standard implementation.
> 
> Would you argue that Python is unsuitable for parsing real-world (i.e. 
> broken) HTML because Beautiful Soup is not in the standard library? That 
> Python is unsuitable for scientific and mathematical processing because 
> Scipy and Numpy aren't in the standard library? That you can't do natural 
> language processing with Python because NLTK is not in the standard 
> library? That you can't do image processing with Python because PIL is a 
> third-party library?
> 
> There's no doubt that having a good standard library with a rich toolset 
> is a beneficial feature of Python. Python's philosophy of "batteries 
> included" has been one of it's strengths. But it would be absurd to claim 
> that if a tool isn't in the standard library, the language can't do it.


Well, you are right, but it is not the same thing.

If Tkinter is included by default in Python package, much more programmers would be tempted to use Tkinter instead of WxPython, so they will create bad programs.

The best idea would be to include WxPython in Python and eliminate Tkinter.
If this is not possible, because of those reasons that were discussed here, then the second-best idea would be to just eliminate Tkinter from Python, because as you said, if it is not included, it doesn't mean that a module can't be used, but in that case the programmers won't be tempted to use it.

And Python should also not include any editor because for some programmers it is absolutely useless anyway. The editor can be installed separately very easy and the programmers can choose the editor they like.

The problem is not that WxPython is not encouraged, but that Tkinter is encouraged because it is promoted.

Octavian