cPython, IronPython, Jython, and PyPy (Oh my!)

[Ethan Furman]

Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
>> A record is an interesting critter -- it is given life either from the user
>> or from the disk-bound data;  its fields can then change, but those changes
>> are not reflected on disk until .write_record() is called;  I do this
>> because I am frequently moving data from one table to another, making
>> changes to the old record contents before creating the new record with the
>> changes -- since I do not call .write_record() on the old record those
>> changes do not get backed up to disk.
> 
> I strongly recommend being more explicit about usage and when it gets
> written and re-read, rather than relying on garbage collection.
> Databasing should not be tied to a language's garbage collection.
> Imagine you were to reimplement the equivalent logic in some other
> language - could you describe it clearly? If so, then that's your
> algorithm. If not, you have a problem.

Yeah, I've been thinking about this for a couple hours now;  initially 
(waaaaay back when) I didn't want to keep hitting the disk unnecessarily 
-- but all my other supporting data structures go to great lengths to 
not keep records in memory unless the user has them explicitly named or 
contained... I think I've been fighting against myself!  Good news is 
I'm winning.  ;)

~Ethan~