On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:00 AM, Yo-Yo Ma <baxterstock...@gmail.com> wrote: > Developer of a pet shop software adds: > > feed_before_midnight = models.BooleanField() > > because they're planning on carrying baby gremlins... forgets to update the > zoological XML feed importer to use the "feed_before_midnight" value, and > the rest is history :)
We need to be clear on what we (as in, the Django project) classify as "catastrophic data loss". Examples of Catastrophic data loss: * You request a save of object X, and object X is not saved. * You save object X, and object Y is modified. * You save object X, and object Z is deleted. NOT examples of Catastrophic data loss: * You forget to set a value on an object, and the default isn't what you expected. * You set a value on an object, which is saved verbatim, but wasn't the correct value under the circumstances. In the example you provide, I agree that there would be catastrophic consequences. However, the code is doing exactly what it's instructed to do. While I may concede that this is a bug, it's a bug caused by ambiguous default behaviour, not behaviour that is fundamentally incorrect or destructive -- it's essentially nothing more than "0 is a default value". You can argue that 0 isn't an appropriate default in this circumstance, but you can't argue that it is (a) a particularly surprising default, or (b) that the developer was given an opportunity (multiple opportunities, really) to set an appropriate default. If this conflicts with what you consider to be catastrophic, thats fine -- I'm just letting you know the benchmark that we, as a project, use to guide our decision making process. Yours, Russ Magee %-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en.
