[Python-ideas] millisecond and microsecond times without floats

[Nick Coghlan]

On 24 June 2015 at 21:38, Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:03:38 +0200
> Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>> Don't you have an additional namespace for micropython-specific
>> features?
>
> I treat it as a good sign that it's ~8th message in the thread and it's
> only the first time we get a hint that we should get out with our stuff
> into a separate namespace ;-).

We hadn't previously gotten to the fact that part of your motivation
was helping folks learn the intricacies of low level fixed width time
measurement, though.

That's actually a really cool idea - HC11 assembly programming and TI
C5420 DSP programming are still two of my favourite things I've ever
done, and it would be nice if folks could more easily start exploring
the mindset of the embedded microprocessor world without having to
first deal with the incidental complexity of emulators or actual
embedded hardware (even something like programming an Arduino directly
is more hassle than remote controlling one from a Raspberry Pi or PC).

Unfortunately, I can't think of a good alternative name that isn't
ambiguous at the CPython layer - embedded CPython is very different
from an embedded microprocessor, utime is taken, and microtime is
confusable with microseconds.

I'm tempted to suggest calling it "qtime", and using TI's Q notation
to denote the formats of numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_%28number_format%29

That would conflict with your notion of making the APIs agnostic as to
the exact bitwidth used, though, as well as with the meaning of the
"q" prefix in qmath: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/qmath

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia