On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 4:18 AM, Steven D'Aprano <st...@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 _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
