Running on Win 7, 3.2.2, IDLE, I get
''' 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "F:\Python\mypy\tem.py", line 19, in <module>
    the_rowconfigure_info = the_frame.rowconfigure(the_row_index)
  File "C:\Programs\Python32\lib\tkinter\__init__.py", line 1326, in grid_rowconfigure
    return self._grid_configure('rowconfigure', index, cnf, kw)
  File "C:\Programs\Python32\lib\tkinter\__init__.py", line 1279, in _grid_configure
    elif '.' in value:
TypeError: argument of type 'int' is not iterable
'''
(For tracker purposes, this is a graceful exit, not a crash - as in *nix segfault or equivalent Windows error box.)
'''
>>> help(Frame.rowconfigure)
Help on function grid_rowconfigure in module tkinter:

grid_rowconfigure(self, index, cnf={}, **kw)
    Configure row INDEX of a grid.
    
    Valid resources are minsize (minimum size of the row),
    weight (how much does additional space propagate to this row)
    and pad (how much space to let additionally).
'''
The above implies that setting uniform=1 (in your code) works because it is ignored. From docs on the web, it appears that 'uniform' is valid and is just missing from our doc string. It is different from the other three, though, in jperhaps not being restricted to int values.

You are right that (line 1259)
    def _grid_configure(self, command, index, cnf, kw):
expects strings (which is what tcl uses). I do not know enough, though, to know where the bug is. I do notice, however, that setting with a Python int matches online Python examples and that the code runs without the attempt to read the config.