On Sep 9, 5:58 pm, Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:59:19 -0700, castironpi wrote:
> > I will try my idea again. I want to talk to people about a module I
> > want to write and I will take the time to explain it. I think it's a
> > "cool idea" that a lot of people, forgiving the slang, could benefit
> > from. What are its flaws?
>
> [snip long description with not-very-credible use-cases]
Steven,
> You've created a solution to a problem which (probably) only affects a
> very small number of people, at least judging by your use-cases. Who has
> a 4GB XML file, and how much crack did they smoke?
I judge from the existence of 'shelve' and 'pickle' modules, and
relational database packages, that the problem I am addressing is not
rare. It could be the millionaire investor across the street, the
venture capitalist down the hall, or the guy with a huge CD catalog.
> Castironpi, what do *you* use this proof-of-concept module for?
Honestly, nothing yet. I just wrote it. My user community and
customer base are very small. Originally, I wanted to store variable-
length strings in a file, where shelves and databases were overkill.
I created it for its beauty, sorry to disappoint.
> Don't
> bother tell us what you think *we* should use it for. Tell us what you're
> using it for, or at least what somebody else is using it for. If this is
> just a module that you think will be cool, I don't like your chances of
> people caring. There is no shortage of "cool" software that isn't useful
> for anything, and unlike eye-candy, nobody is going to use your module
> just because they like the algorithm.
Unfortunately, nobody is going to care about most of the uses I have
for it 'til I have a job. I'm goofing around with a laptop,
remembering when my databases professor kept dropping the ball on
VARCHARs. If you want a sound byte, think, "imagine programming
without 'new' and 'malloc'."
> If you don't have an existing application for the software, then explain
> what it does (not how) and give some idea of the performance ("it's alpha
> and written in Python and really slow, but I will re-write it in C and
> expect it to make a billion random accesses in a 10GB file per
> millisecond", or whatever). You might be lucky and have somebody say
> "Hey, that's just the tool I need to solve my problem!".
I wrote a Rope implementation just to test drive it. It exceeded the
native immutable string type at 2 megs. It used 'struct' instead of
'ctypes', so that number could conceivably come down. I am intending
to leave it in pure Python, so there.
> --
> Steven
Pleasure chatting as always sir.
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