[Python-Dev] [PEP 3148] futures - execute computations asynchronously (original) (raw)

exarkun at twistedmatrix.com exarkun at twistedmatrix.com
Fri Mar 5 21🔞22 CET 2010

On 07:10 pm, guido at python.org wrote:

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:30 AM, <exarkun at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:

On 05:06 pm, curt at hagenlocher.org wrote:

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Jesse Noller <jnoller at gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Daniel Stutzbach <daniel at stutzbachenterprises.com> wrote: > On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:03 AM, Brian Quinlan <brian at sweetapp.com> > wrote: >> >> import futures > > +1 on the idea, -1 on the name.  It's too similar to "from future > import > ...". Futures is a common term for this, and implemented named this in other languages. I don't think we should be adopting things that are common, and found elsewhere and then renaming them. Another common term for this is a "promise". Promises aren't exactly the same.  This would be a particularly bad name to apply here. Please explain. Even the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futuresandpromises), despite promising to explain the difference, didn't explain it.

The "explicit" futures on the wikipedia page seems to cover what is commonly referred to as a future. For example, Java's futures look like this.

The "implicit" futures are what is generally called a promise. For example, E's promises look like this.

Though the difference is mainly one of API, it turns out to make a significant difference in what you can accomplish. Promises are much more amenable to the pipelining optimization, for example. They're also much harder to implement in Python without core language changes.

Jean-Paul

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