Python's Built In IDE Isn't Just Sitting IDLE

Summary One of the first challenges that new programmers are faced with is figuring out what editing environment to use. For the past 20 years, Python has had an easy answer to that question in the form of IDLE. In this episode Tal Einat helps us explore its history, the ways it is used, how it was built, and what is in store for its future. Even if you have never used the IDLE editor yourself, it is still an important piece of Python’s strength and history, and this conversation helps to highlight why that is. Announcements Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. When you’re ready to launch your next app or want to try a project you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so take a look at our friends over at Linode. With 200 Gbit/s private networking, scalable shared block storage, node balancers, and a 40 Gbit/s public network, all controlled by a brand new API you’ve got everything you need to scale up. And for your tasks that need fast computation, such as training machine learning models, they just launched dedicated CPU instances. Go to pythonpodcast.com/linode to get a $20 credit and launch a new server in under a minute. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show! You listen to this show to learn and stay up to date with the ways that Python is being used, including the latest in machine learning and data analysis. For even more opportunities to meet, listen, and learn from your peers you don’t want to miss out on this year’s conference season. We have partnered with organizations such as O’Reilly Media, Corinium Global Intelligence, ODSC, and Data Council. Upcoming events include the Software Architecture Conference in NYC, Strata Data in San Jose, and PyCon US in Pittsburgh. Go to pythonpodcast.com/conferences to learn more about these and other events, and take advantage of our partner discounts to save money when you register today. Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Tal Einat about the IDLE editor for Python, it’s history, and what is in store for its future Interview Introductions How did you get introduced to Python? For anyone who hasn’t used it, can you start by explaining what IDLE is? IDLE has been part of the standard library for Python for quite some time now. What was the motivation for adding it to the core of Python? How has the evolution of our computing environment changed the motivation for maintaining IDLE and the use cases that it is most beneficial for? What are the benefits of including a basic editor in the default distribution of Python? What are some of the ways in which it is often used? What are the limiting factors that lead users to other IDEs or text editors? What role do you think IDLE has played in the growth of Python? What was your motivation for getting involved as a Python contributor and working on the implementation of IDLE? How is IDLE implemented and what are some of the ways that it has evolved since its initial introduction? How well has the code for IDLE aged as new features and capabilities are added to the language? What are some of the integration points available for extending IDLE? What are some of the most interesting or innovative ways that you have seen IDLE used and extended? What is planned for the future of the IDLE module? Keep In Touch LinkedIn @TalEinat on Twitter taleinat on GitHub Picks Tobias Mr. Robot Tal Captain Fantastic The Lesson To Unlearn article by Paul Graham Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other show, the Data Engineering Podcast for the latest on modern data management. Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes. If you’ve learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@podcastinit.com) with your story. To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers Join the community in the new Zulip chat workspace at pythonpodcast.com/chat Links IDLE FullProof Israel Mandatory Military Service Eric Idle Monty Python Visual Studio IDLE-fork Vi Emacs Sublime Text Visual Studio Code REPL == Read Eval Print Loop Tcl/Tk Tkinter RPC == Remote Procedure Call IDLEx VPython Podcast Episode Python Turtle SVN (Subversion) The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA