Lennart Regebro wrote:
On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 08:03, Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au> wrote:
clock = get_clock(MONOTONIC|HIRES) or get_clock(MONOTONIC)
If the symbol names are not the horribleness, can you qualify what API
you would like more?
Well, get_clock(monotonic=True, highres=True) would be a vast
improvement over get_clock(MONOTONIC|HIRES). I also think it should
raise an error if not found. The clarity and easy of use of the API is
much more important than how much you can do in one line.
That's a matter of opinion. I'm not particularly fond of this get_clock idea,
but of the two examples given, I much prefer the first of these:
get_clock(MONOTONIC|HIRES)
get_clock(monotonic=True, highres=True)
and not just because it is shorter. The API is crying out for enum arguments,
not a series of named flags.
But frankly I think this get_clock API sucks. At some earlier part of this
thread, somebody listed three or four potential characteristics of clocks. If
we offer these as parameters to get_clock(), that means there's eight or
sixteen different clocks that the user can potentially ask for. Do we really
offer sixteen different clocks? Or even eight? I doubt it -- there's probably
only two or three. So the majority of potential clocks don't exist.
With get_clock, discoverability is hurt. How does the caller know what clocks
are available? How can she look for documentation for them?
A simple, obvious, discoverable API is best. If we offer three clocks, we have
three named functions. If some of these clocks aren't available on some
platform, and we can't emulate them, then simply don't have that named
function available on that platform. That's easy to discover: trying to use
that clock will give a NameError or AttributeError, and the caller can then
fall back on an alternative, or fail, whichever is appropriate.
--
Steven
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