Library philosophy

[Tim Peters]

[Paul Prescod]
> ...
> I believe that Python's libraries are in many places too thin of
> a layer on top of the C library and are thus not very Pythonish.
> Evidence of this includes indecipherable function names like
> strtfmt and APIs that return tuples instead of objects and take
> integers as "flags" instead of strings or objects.
>
> Would it it make sense to start wrapping the low-level modules
> with high-level, easier to use modules that would be "the default"
> in Python 2?

"Yes" from me, but it requires a major commitment to API design,
implementation, and-- last but most important --docs.  The great advantages of
sticking to thin layers at the start were that the Unix/POSIX docs were
incorporated by implicit reference, and failures could be blamed on the
platform libc ("hey, don't look at us -- it's just a thin wrapper" <wink>).

roll-your-own-api-and-the-docs-must-come-first-ly y'rs  - tim