On Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 1:39 AM Raimi bin Karim <raimi.bkarim@gmail.com> wrote:
So this is more of a heartfelt note rather than an objective one — I would love my fellow Python programmers to be exposed to this mental model, and that could only be done by implementing it in the standard library.
I'm not certain that being in the standard library exposes Python programmers to something. Without looking up any references, which of these can you do with just the Python standard library (shelling out to external programs doesn't count)? * Get the dimensions of your terminal window * Connect to a PostgreSQL database * Extract login information from an FTP URL * Hash and verify passwords with bcrypt * Build an SMTP server * Build an FTP server * Parse a WAV file * Parse an MP3 file * Change the value of 3 * Build an MSI file (Windows installer) * Convert a file from UTF-7 to UTF-8 * Enumerate all Unicode characters that represent the digit 6 More importantly: If you didn't know that one of these was possible, would spending time writing Python code have exposed you to it? For instance (sorry, spoilers), the last one is most definitely possible, but if you were parsing input, would you think to check for anything other than the ASCII character '6'? Once you've thought of something, it's easy to think "it'd be cool if Python already had this". But the exact set of iteration tools that *you* want is probably not the same as the set of iteration tools that someone else wants. It would be extremely hard for the stdlib to have the perfect set of tools available, and as soon as something isn't available, you have to appeal to the core devs to add it, then wait for a release of Python that includes it. In contrast, you can simply use your own pipeline class without synchronizing with anyone else. You can choose what to call it, what tools to make available (and can add more as you find the need), and can make your own decisions about style, like whether it should be "pipe(x) | filter(...) | sort(...)" or "pipe(x).filter(...).sort(...)" or even "pipe(x) @filter(...) @sort(...)". There's no need to convince anyone else of what you think is right - you can just go ahead and do it! BTW, if you want more iteration tools, there are plenty to choose from. The more-itertools library has a ton of really cool stuff. Should they also be available in the pipeline? If you're making your own, then absolutely yes, you can have them available. But if it's part of the standard library, it can't depend on an external module like that. ChrisA