I'd like input from others, but maybe it's worth expanding the scope to python-ideas? Not too many people read async-sig. (Or should that be coroutine-sig? :-)
On Sat, Oct 8, 2016 at 8:50 PM, Nathaniel Smith <n...@pobox.com> wrote: > On Sat, Oct 8, 2016 at 7:48 PM, Guido van Rossum <gu...@python.org> wrote: >> I've heard people call it an "async def" too. >> >> I don't think it's quite as dramatic as you worry about. People also >> talk about generators (not generator functions) and even though >> there's a further ambiguity between the function and the type of >> object it returns, we still get along. > > Hmm, I don't mean to be dramatic. Obviously the world will not end if > we keep using "coroutine" as the standard term :-). I just think that > calling them "async functions" (and "async function objects" when the > distinction is important) would be a nice unambiguous win for pedagogy > and clarity, and that it's worth grabbing those when you get the > chance. "coroutine" says more about the history of how we got here > than about what these things actually mean to a regular end-user; > "async function" is so transparent that you can skip the vocab > discussion and go straight to talking about how to use them. > >> There's also the @coroutine decorator. > > There's two of them, even: @types.coroutine and @asyncio.coroutine. > I'm not really sure what the difference is -- I think at this point we > could delete some code by making the latter an alias for the former? > But for now they're still independent and I might be missing > something. > > And unless I am missing something, these are only useful in rather > unusual situations: either because you're trying to maintain > compatibility with 3.4 (which I think will rapidly become irrelevant > for most asyncio users, if it isn't already) or you're implementing > your own trampoline (e.g. [1][2]). So even if we leave the decorators > alone, it doesn't really stop us from switching to clearer terminology > for day-to-day usage -- most people will never encounter @coroutine > anyway. > > (For completeness: the other stdlib identifiers I see that mention > "coroutine" are: sys.{get,set}_coroutine_wrapper, several functions in > inspect, and asyncio.run_coroutine_threadsafe.) > >> If you have a specific piece of documentation in mind, let's talk -- >> maybe it's fine to change. > > Well, it's a basic concept that gets mentioned constantly throughout > all discussions... For example, I count 29 instances in [3] and 53 > instances in [4]. Clearly it's useful to have a standard term for > these things. > > -n > > [1] > https://github.com/dabeaz/curio/blob/6166a54a731df59c15fe27791d1c6b048f09f941/curio/traps.py#L46 > [2] > https://github.com/njsmith/async_generator/blob/fab4af987cb86c6db549131b66d3ab4c4e327a29/async_generator/impl.py#L13 > [3] https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio-stream.html > [4] https://curio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference.html > > -- > Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) _______________________________________________ Async-sig mailing list Async-sig@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/async-sig Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/