WP-A: A New URL Shortener
Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn
PointedEars at web.de
Tue Mar 15 18:53:53 EDT 2016
Vinicius Mesel wrote:
> I'm a 16 year old Python Programmer that wanted to do something different.
> But, like we know, ideas are quite difficult to find.
> So I decided to develop a URL Shortener to help the Python community out
> and share my coding knowledge, and today the project was launched with its
> first stable version. So if you want to see the software working, go check
> it out at: http://wp-a.co/ Or if you want to see the source code to
> contribute and help the project: https://github.com/vmesel/WP-A.CO
While I commend your efforts, I think that you should have chosen another
topic for your project. It is also hard for me to see in which way this is
“something different” – are there not enough “URL Shorteners” already? –,
and how a “URL Shortener” could “help the Python community out”.
Because I think that “URL Shorteners” are a bad idea in the first place: One
never knows for how long a time a “short URL” works, who is listening in the
middle, and what they are referring to, until one uses them at which point
it is too late. If a “short URL” expires, there is *no way* to retrieve the
referred content; when a *real* URI breaks, there are services like the
Internet Archive and the Google cache to help one out. So when I see a
“short URL”, I tend not to use it.
I find it particularly disturbing that in wpa.py:processaURL() your software
apparently stores the original URIs in an SQL database; in the case of your
proof-of-concept, in *your* database. So *you* are listening in the middle
then. I cannot be sure because I have not thought this through, but with
aliases for common second-level domains, and with text compression, it
should be possible to do this without a database.
So sorry, because of that already, I will certainly not use or recommend
your service. “Leave others the privacies of their minds and lives.
Intimacy remains precious only insofar as it is inviolate.” ─Surak
And with the exception of Twitter-ish sites that place a limit on message
length, there really is *no need* for shorter URIs nowadays. (HTTP) clients
and servers are capable of processing really long ones [1]; electronic
communications media and related software, too [2]. And data storage space
as well as data transmission has become exceptionally inexpensive. A few
less bytes there do not count.
Instead, there *is* a need for *concise*, *semantic* URIs that Web (service)
users can *easily* *remember*. It is the duty of the original Web
authors∕developers to make sure that there are, and I think that no kind of
automation is going to ease or replace thoughtful path design anytime soon
(but please, prove me wrong):
<https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/uri-choose>
__________
[1] <http://stackoverflow.com/a/417184/855543>
[2] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#appendix-C>
--
PointedEars
Twitter: @PointedEars2
Please do not cc me. / Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail.
More information about the Python-list
mailing list