Also, to hopefully at a little more humor to our "lively debate" > I’m not sure conflating your opinion on this with “it’s just good engineering to make things blurry sometimes” creates a logical truth.
I think it really depends on the definition of "engineer", for me "engineer" is someone who builds stuff that is useful for people, not one that is tied to naming and classifications and mathematical abstractions (while the engineer knows and understands them perfectly well). This discussion reminded me of this (funny in my opinion) joke that illustrates the difference. I hope others will find it equally funny, and that I will not offend anyone with mathematical background (I apologise in advance if you feel offended): Two engineers who are flying a test flight of a new balloon they just built have been caught by a storm and they were lost in the middle of nowhere. They fly pretty low and they see a man walking down. They shout to him "Where are we now?!!" The man answers "In a balloon!!!!" The wind blows them far from the man and he disappears. Baffled for a moment, those two engineers look at each other and one of them says: "It must have been a mathematician." "Why?" asks the second. "Because his answer was extremely precise, and completely useless". Good night :) J. On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 12:49 AM Jarek Potiuk <ja...@potiuk.com> wrote: > Yep. that will do as well for me - in the form proposed. We do not "have > to" redefine the name, leaving it as simply "dag" and explaining the origin > while clearly separating from it is also a good way to segway to "somewhat > cyclic" workflow / graph if we decide to (which I think will happen sooner > than 3.5 or 4.0 Jens :)) > > J. > > > On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 12:42 AM Ryan Hatter > <ryan.hat...@astronomer.io.invalid> wrote: > >> Long after opening this can of worms, I also agree with Daniel S: Let's >> define "DAG" in the context of Airflow and be done with it (at least for >> now :) ). I've opened a docs PR attempting to do just that: >> https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/46875 >> <https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/46875> >> >> On Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 6:16 PM Ferruzzi, Dennis >> <ferru...@amazon.com.invalid> wrote: >> >> > My two shillings: I came to Airflow knowing what a DAG was in the math >> > sense, and I was a bit surprised to see it used for Airflow. Our DAGS >> > aren't technically DAGs and haven't been since task retries were >> > introduced, maybe even before that. I'd support what Daniel said. IFF >> > we're going to change the name, I think "Workflow" works better than >> trying >> > to redefine an existing known term, but honestly I would advocate for >> > switching to using "Dag" as a proper noun with some little note >> somewhere >> > that the name comes from DAG but we've since evolved past that strict >> > definition. >> > >> > >> > - ferruzzi >> > >> > >> > ________________________________ >> > From: Jens Scheffler <j_scheff...@gmx.de.INVALID> >> > Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2025 2:03 PM >> > To: dev@airflow.apache.org >> > Subject: RE: [EXT] Airflow should deprecate the term "DAG" for end users >> > >> > CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not >> > click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and >> know >> > the content is safe. >> > >> > >> > >> > AVERTISSEMENT: Ce courrier électronique provient d’un expéditeur >> externe. >> > Ne cliquez sur aucun lien et n’ouvrez aucune pièce jointe si vous ne >> pouvez >> > pas confirmer l’identité de l’expéditeur et si vous n’êtes pas certain >> que >> > le contenu ne présente aucun risque. >> > >> > >> > >> > Wow what a discussion thread. Was reading it and...: >> > >> > I am okay to clean up docs and agree to the others that we should NOT >> > change code interfaces. >> > >> > For the marketing part I need to repeat: (Almost) Everybody touching >> > Airflow needs an explanaition what "DAG" means. Changing the acronym to >> > have another meaning for DAG still needs an explanaition. For me >> > reanming the meaning of the Acronym does not bring any benefit, also not >> > Marketing. >> > >> > I have also seen multiple times challenges for teams in our area (even >> > outside ML) who wanted to iterate over results and we needed to >> > implement complexer multi-DAG structures to make this possible because >> > of DAG. If we would go in the direction as Jarek pitched (which might be >> > earliest 3.5 or 4.0) that a non-DAG workflow would be made possible (I'd >> > LOVE this!) then I would strongly opt for renaming it to "Workflow". >> > Because everybody understands (or thinks he understands) what it is and >> > DAG might be one implementation of this. >> > >> > So my conclusion is I am not for changing the meaning of DAG. >> > >> > On 18.02.25 19:54, Jarek Potiuk wrote: >> > > Ech. I would love so much if we could correct sent email same way we >> can >> > > correct messages in Slack :D >> > > >> > > On Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 7:50 PM Daniel Standish >> > > <daniel.stand...@astronomer.io.invalid> wrote: >> > > >> > >> damnit --- meant to say is *not* strictly speaking .... >> > >> >> > >> On Tue, Feb 18, 2025 at 10:46 AM Daniel Standish < >> > >> daniel.stand...@astronomer.io> wrote: >> > >> >> > >>> Yeah I also disagree with code changes here. This thread went in an >> > >>> unexpected direction since I last poked my head in :) >> > >>> >> > >>> My thought is just in docs I would de-emphasize the mathy part of >> this. >> > >>> We can say a DAG is airflow's model for a collection of tasks that >> run, >> > >>> typically on a schedule. We could say further add, e.g. in *one >> place* >> > >>> somewhere, that the name DAG originated from a mathematical concept >> > >> called >> > >>> directed acyclic graph. But I do not think we need to go revising >> > >> history >> > >>> about that and providing new words for the acronym. >> > >>> >> > >>> But it has always been the reality that an Airflow DAG is strictly >> > >>> speaking a directed acyclic graph. It's something different. We do >> > >> forbid >> > >>> cycles. And it does contain the info needed to construct a graph of >> > the >> > >>> tasks. But it's much richer than that concept as well. >> > >>> >> > >>> I don't think we really need to go much further than that. But I'd >> > also >> > >>> be in support of writing `dag` or `dags` in docs instead of DAG or >> DAGs >> > >>> because it's ugly to do so, and unnecessary, and it invokes that >> mathy >> > >>> concept that is both confusing and inadequate. >> > >>> >> > >>> >> > >>> >> > >> > --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@airflow.apache.org >> > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@airflow.apache.org >> > >> > >> >
