Should I write a book on Python Metaprogramming ?

[Andrew Bennetts]

On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 06:54:23AM -0400, andrew cooke wrote:
> 
[..snip..]
> For example, I may need to write an extension to Python that allows people
> to write/debug a script on one machine that then transparently lets them
> manipulate objects on a remote machine (once the program is debugged the
> library in use would have a switch flipped so that it used corba, say, to
> provide the same interface remotely).  A book that helped me do that would
> be great (and it seems like a good example of meta programming).

There's no such thing as truly transparent remote objects.  Remote objects
are unreliable (the network can go down) and slow (even the simplest remote
method may take seconds to return a result if the network is congested).
This breaks assumptions in code that treats remote objects as if they
behaved exactly the same as local objects -- if "obj.getPrice()" worked 3
lines ago, of course it will work now!  And of course the object's method
calls are speedy enough that they won't affect the responsiveness of the GUI
that blocks while calling the object's methods...

That's not to say remote debugging is impractical, just that it can't
possibly be transparent.  Remote method calls are inherently different to
local method calls, and any system that assumes otherwise will cause you
grief at some point.

-Andrew.