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IDLE

Integrated development environment for Python

  • 1 min read
  • 1 chapters

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

According to the included README and the online IDLE documentation, 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", 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.

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Source and licence. Adapted from the Wikipedia article “IDLE” (this version, 2026-08-13) by its contributors, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Lablypedia has left out its tables, references and most pictures, and linked it to other Lablypedia articles.