[Python-Dev] PySet API (original) (raw)

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Tue Mar 28 22:40:46 CEST 2006

Excerpting...

On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 14:07 +0000, Gareth McCaughan wrote:

* Simple API:

API complexity is measured in brain cells, not in methods. * Ease of making mistakes: The Python API is absolutely stuffed with places where you can go wrong by forgetting about subtle refcounting issues. Sure, it's nice to minimize that pain, but it's never going to be possible to write much code that uses the C API without being alert to such issues.

* Duck typing:

Yup, supporting duck typing is good. That's why we have an abstract API. There are concrete APIs for all sorts of particular kinds of Python object; it seems pretty clear to me that this isn't a mistake, and that sets should be one such type. Clients get to choose how to trade off the benefits in efficiency, conciseness and clarity from using the concrete API against the benefits in generality from using the abstract one.

* Efficiency:

Anyone measured this? The mere fact that the overhead of (say) emptying a set using PyObjectCallMethod is O(1) doesn't mean it's insignificant. For many applications the size of your sets is O(1) too. (Often with quite a small implicit constant, too.)

My sentiments exactly Gareth. Thanks for putting it so much more eloquently than I have. :)

-Barry

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