[Python-ideas] Delayed Execution via Keyword

[David Mertz]

Agreed. But there might be cases where something occurring at most one—at
some unspecified time—is desirable behavior. In general though, I think
avoiding side effects should be programming recommendations, not anything
enforced.

This model isn't really so different from what we do with asyncio and its
"call soon" indeterminate order.

On Feb 17, 2017 1:07 AM, "Joseph Jevnik" <joejev at gmail.com> wrote:

> Even with the new syntax I would highly discourage delaying a function
> with observable side effects. It would make reasoning about the behavior of
> the program very difficult and debugging becomes much harder.
>
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 3:31 AM, David Mertz <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:
>
>> I had forgotten about Daisy! It's an interesting project too. The
>> behavior of 'autodask()' is closer to what I'd want in new syntax than is
>> plain dask.delayed(). I'm not sure of all the corners. But is definitely
>> love to have it for expressions generally, not only pure functions.
>>
>> On Feb 17, 2017 12:03 AM, "Joseph Jevnik" <joejev at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> You can let dask "see" into the function by entering it and wrapping all
>>> of the operations in `delayed`; this is how daisy[0] builds up large
>>> compute graphs. In this case, you could "inline" the identity function and
>>> the delayed object would flow through the function and the call to identity
>>> never makes it into the task graph.
>>>
>>> [0] http://daisy-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/appendix.html#d
>>> aisy.autodask
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 2:26 AM, David Mertz <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 11:15 PM, David Mertz <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> This also means that a 'delayed' object needs to be idempotent.  So
>>>>>
>>>>> x = delayed 2+2
>>>>>
>>>>> y = delayed x
>>>>>
>>>>> z = delayed delayed delayed y
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Wrapping more delays around an existing delayed object should probably
>>>>> just keep the same object rather than "doubly delaying" it.  If there is
>>>>> some reason to create separate delayed objects that isn't occurring to me,
>>>>> evaluating 'z' would still go through the multiple evaluation levels until
>>>>> it got to a non-delayed value.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This is sort of like how iterators "return self" and 'it = iter(it)'.
>>>>
>>>> In the case of Dask, wrapping more delayed objects creates layers of
>>>> these lazy objects.  But I think it has to because it's not part of the
>>>> syntax.  Actually, I guess Dask could do graph reduction without actual
>>>> computation if it wanted to.  But this is the current behavior:
>>>>
>>>> >>> def unchanged(x):
>>>> ...     return x
>>>> >>> a = delayed(unchanged)(42)
>>>> >>> a
>>>> Delayed('unchanged-1780fed6-f835-4c31-a86d-50015ae1449a')
>>>> >>> b = delayed(unchanged)(a)
>>>> >>> c = delayed(unchanged)(b)
>>>> >>> c
>>>> Delayed('unchanged-adc5e307-6e33-45bf-ad73-150b906e921d')
>>>> >>> c.dask
>>>> {'unchanged-1780fed6-f835-4c31-a86d-50015ae1449a': (<function
>>>> __main__.unchanged>,
>>>>   42),
>>>>  'unchanged-adc5e307-6e33-45bf-ad73-150b906e921d': (<function
>>>> __main__.unchanged>,
>>>>   'unchanged-c3282bc4-bdaa-4148-8509-9155cac83ef0'),
>>>>  'unchanged-c3282bc4-bdaa-4148-8509-9155cac83ef0': (<function
>>>> __main__.unchanged>,
>>>>   'unchanged-1780fed6-f835-4c31-a86d-50015ae1449a')}
>>>>
>>>> >>> c.compute()
>>>> 42
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Actually Dask *cannot* know that "unchanged()" is the function that
>>>> makes no transformation on its one parameter.  From what it can see, it's
>>>> just a function that does *something*.  And I guess similarly in the
>>>> proposed syntax, anything other than a plain name after the 'delayed' would
>>>> still need to create a new delayed object.  So it's all an edge case that
>>>> doesn't make much difference.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Keeping medicines from the bloodstreams of the sick; food
>>>> from the bellies of the hungry; books from the hands of the
>>>> uneducated; technology from the underdeveloped; and putting
>>>> advocates of freedom in prisons.  Intellectual property is
>>>> to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
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