[Python-Dev] Rework nntlib? (original) (raw)

geremy condra debatem1 at gmail.com
Wed Sep 15 14:06:37 CEST 2010

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 4:18 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

On Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:06:29 pm geremy condra wrote:

I ran some statistics on the number of times modules out of the stdlib got imported a few months ago What do those statistics measure? The number of individual import statements with a given module name? The number of times those imports are actually executed? Something else?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I already told you that. It's the number of packages on pypi that imported each of those, and I measured it by parsing for import statements.

and came up with a reasonably comprehensive list of the least-used things in the stdlib. Least used by whom?

Not to be pedantic, but there isn't a good answer to a question as vague as this. If you want a piece of information, ask for it and I'll tell you if I can get it or not.

I'm not sure what the name of the library was originally, but the word 'gopher' does not appear in any of the imports that I was able to parse in pypi. By contrast, nntplib and poplib are tied at 8 [...]

I don't know how to interpret that. Does that mean that there are eight modules in the whole of PyPi which import nntplib or poplib? If so, what does that tell us? Those eight modules could have three users between them, or they could be critical infrastructure for a quarter of the Internet.

Yup. The closest I could come to representing that would be by the number of downloads, and IIRC I have that information laying around here somewhere. It would probably be several days before I could get ahold of it though.

I'm not trying to belittle the stats you have gathered, but without the context of what the numbers represent, it's impossible to put any meaning to them.

Not really. It's a metric of use, and as such a starting point in a discussion. After that I wouldn't take it too seriously no matter what metric is applied- looking at the number of downloads on pypi it's a fairly small sample anyway.

Geremy Condra

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