[Python-ideas] [Python-Dev] Python needs a standard asynchronous return object

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Sun, 12 Sep 2010 08:49:56 -0700
Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> Sure, but the tricky thing is to make it pluggable so that PEP 3148
> and Twisted and other frameworks can use it all together, and a single
> call will accept a mixture of Futures.

Having a common abstraction (Future or Deferred) allows for
scheduling-agnostic libraries which consume and/or produce these
abstractions (*). I'm not sure it is desireable to mix scheduling models
in a single process (let alone a single thread), though.

(*) Of course, the abstraction is somehow leaky since being called from
different threads, depending on the scheduling model, could have adverse
consequences

> ISTM that the main difference is that add_done_callback() isn't meant
> for callbacks that return a value. So then the exceptions that might
> be raised are kind of "out of band".

It implies that it's mostly useful for simple callbacks (which would
e.g. print out a success report, or set an Event to wake up another
thread). The Twisted model allows the major part of processing to occur
in the callbacks themselves, in which case proper error handling and
propagation is mandatory.

Regards

Antoine.