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just because people do something doesn’t mean it’s right.
i guess the tendency for CLI applications to do it wrong comes from
1. their ad-hoc beginnings. you usually start with one script file and extend it
2. availability expanduser('~') is in the stdlib and more well-known than e.g. appdirs, and people don’t like to add dependencies to small things
3. the shell and old, widely used applications using ~/.appname, so it’s more well-know to do that
on the other hand, GUI applications usually have a build system in place for UI file compilation, need a .desktop file installed, and so on, i.e. need more boilerplate and dependencies from the start, and people have to research how to do things properly. GUI libraries have their built-in standard dirs interfaces as well.
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another thing. on the python-ideas thread someone mentioned that
> I count 17 of those on my Windows machine (!) right now, including .idlerc, .ipython, .matplotlib, .ipylint.d etc.
this is horrible! this is so obviously the wrong thing to do. i hope having the module will reduce the number of similar atrocities.