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IDLE

Topic: Software

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IDLE
IDLE in action under Ubuntu: shell with highlights settings
Original author(s)Guido van Rossum
Initial releaseDecember 22, 1998; 27 years ago (1998-12-22)
Written inPython
TypeIntegrated development environment
Websitedocs.python.org/library/idle.html

IDLE (short for Integrated Development and Learning Environment)[1][2] is an integrated development environment for Python, which has been bundled with the default implementation of the language since 1.5.2b1.[3][4] It is packaged as an optional part of the Python packaging with many Linux distributions. It is completely written in Python and the Tkinter GUI toolkit (wrapper functions for Tcl/Tk).

IDLE is intended to be a simple IDE and suitable for beginners,[citation needed] especially in an educational environment. To that end, it is cross-platform[5], and avoids feature clutter.

According to the included README and the online IDLE documentation[6], its main features are:

  • Multi-window text editor with syntax highlighting, autocompletion, smart indent and other features.
  • Python shell with syntax highlighting.
  • Integrated debugger with stepping, persistent breakpoints, and call stack visibility.

Author Guido van Rossum says IDLE stands for "Integrated Development and Learning Environment",[6] and since Van Rossum named the language Python after the British comedy group Monty Python, the name IDLE was probably also chosen partly to honor Eric Idle, one of Monty Python's founding members.[7][8]

See also

  • List of integrated development environments for Python

References

  1. ↑ From the Help > About screen
  2. ↑ "IDLE — Python 3.9.5 documentation". https://docs.python.org/3/library/idle.html. 
  3. ↑ Van Rossum, Guido (16 Nov 1998). "IDLE 0.1 -- a Python IDE". comp.lang.python. https://lwn.net/1998/1119/idle.html. "At the conference I mentioned a few times that I was working on a Tkinter-based IDE for Python. I've decided to use the paradigm "release early and often" for this piece of software (especially since I don't expect I'll have much time to work on it), so version 0.1 (essentially a dump of my directory) is now sitting in the contrib directory ftp.python.org." 
  4. ↑ IDLE 0.1 was distributed with the Python 1.5.2b1 release on 12/22/98., From: \Python-1.5.2\Tools\idle\NEWS.txt
  5. ↑ "IDLE documentation quote". https://docs.python.org/3.15/library/idle.html. ""cross-platform: works mostly the same on Windows, Unix, and macOS"" 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "IDLE — Python 3.9.2 documentation". https://docs.python.org/3/library/idle.html. 
  7. ↑ Lutz, Mark & Ascher, David (2004). Learning Python, p. 40. O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN 978-0-596-00281-7.
  8. ↑ Hammond, Mark; Robinson, Andy (2000). Python programming on Win32 (1. ed.). O'Reilly Media, Inc.. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-56592-621-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=fzUCGtyg0MMC&pg=PA59. 



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