I want a Lisp-like REPL for my Python programs that is available to the user who runs my compiled Python program (so, I want compilation as well). The user will be able to interact with my program (instead of just running the main function), change function definitions, etc. and mold the program to their specific use case while it's running.
PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
11–20 of 88 posts
Re: PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
#12I don't see the point. People who want Jupyter or an IDE know where to find it. Other people who want the basic REPL and mostly use editors anyway are annoyed.
Well, perhaps the usual suspects can get another infoworld self-promotion article out of it.
Re: PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
#13I feel like there’s a missing discussion as to why they aren’t going with Ipython
Would be interesting to their reasons, but I'd be surprised if they had chosen it. I freaking love ipython, but it has a bunch of dependencies and extends far beyond just being a repl for the language and introduces things like magic commands, execute as shell, fallback logic etc. Given how tight python keeps it's standard library, it seems pretty much imposssible to imagine those kind of advance features being devel…
I just tested installing ipython and it came with 17 dependencies. Some of which are probably pretty heavy and/or way too in flux to make it into the standard library.
Re: PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
#14I don't see the point. People who want Jupyter or an IDE know where to find it. Other people who want the basic REPL and mostly use editors anyway are annoyed. Well, perhaps the usual suspects can get another infoworld self-promotion article out of it.
There's a tremendous power with defaults and with "batteries included".
Re: PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
#15I want a Lisp-like REPL for my Python programs that is available to the user who runs my compiled Python program (so, I want compilation as well). The user will be able to interact with my program (instead of just running the main function), change function definitions, etc. and mold the program to their specific use case while it's running.
Some things are a bit awkward, but what specifically can't you really do in a Python REPL? You can dynamically overwrite functions in an imported module, you can re-import modules with importlib, etc. I ask because my Lisp experience is limited.
Re: PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
#16I don't see the point. People who want Jupyter or an IDE know where to find it. Other people who want the basic REPL and mostly use editors anyway are annoyed. Well, perhaps the usual suspects can get another infoworld self-promotion article out of it.
If Python is going to include a REPL (which I think it should), it might as well include useful features that people expect from a modern REPL. (That being said, I personally always install ipython...)
Re: PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
#17I don't see the point. People who want Jupyter or an IDE know where to find it. Other people who want the basic REPL and mostly use editors anyway are annoyed. Well, perhaps the usual suspects can get another infoworld self-promotion article out of it.
There's a tremendous power with defaults and with "batteries included".
The same people removed distutils, which is why at my company we had to update several internal C-extensions.
In these decisions the only thing that matters is if Microsoft, Facebook, Bloomberg or one of their employees is pleased.
Re: PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
#18I want a Lisp-like REPL for my Python programs that is available to the user who runs my compiled Python program (so, I want compilation as well). The user will be able to interact with my program (instead of just running the main function), change function definitions, etc. and mold the program to their specific use case while it's running.
Some things are a bit awkward, but what specifically can't you really do in a Python REPL? You can dynamically overwrite functions in an imported module, you can re-import modules with importlib, etc. I ask because my Lisp experience is limited.
Lisp REPL keeps the state of the program because it is a live image. With Python REPL you need to rerun the program to set the variables to their values.
Re: PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
#19I feel like there’s a missing discussion as to why they aren’t going with Ipython
they did acknowledge some alternatives, but I agree more discussion would have been nice. FTA - Option 3: Using other existing REPL implementations: The authors looked at several alternatives like IPython, bpython, ptpython, and xonsh. While all the above are impressive projects, in the end PyREPL was chosen for its combination of maturity, feature set, and lack of additional dependencies. Another key factor was the…
I think ptpython would have been a much better choice. It is relatively small with few dependencies, much more feature complete, importantly it can run in windows terminal AFAIK which pyrepl can't at the moment. I suspect it has also seen much more testing because it is much more widely used.
This really seems like a missed opportunity, instead of another repl that will only be used by developers (they even stated that as primary motivation) who can't install anything else, they could have taken a repl that would actually be widely used to integrate into other programs... Instead I suspect pyrepl will eventually experience the same fate as the current repl, i.e. it will languish with no development and get replaced again eventually because it has become to painful to adjust to changes in the rest of the language and changes in terminals.
Re: PEP 762 – REPL-acing the default REPL
#20This is great. Using the default REPL was always painful after getting used to ptpython. Looking forward to trying it!