[Tutor] Turning a "script" into an "application"

[Kent Johnson]

At 01:37 AM 10/27/2004 -0400, Bill Mill wrote:
>As for my bias towards socket development, I will readily admit to
>that. I've spent a fair amount of time impelementing protocols, while
>I've never written anything other than toy threaded applications, so
>my view is certainly biased. I just feel that a simple socket protocol
>is very easy to implement, and avoids queues, locks, and other less
>familiar (for me) threading concepts.

I think we each are biased towards what we are familiar with. No surprise 
there!

>I'm not yet ready to concede my position, so I'll make one final
>arguments for my position, and it's a higher level one. Conceptually,
>the library and the GUI are different applications in this case. It is
>entirely possible that this network code he's written will be useful
>to others as a library. As such, it makes more sense conceptually to
>keep it separate from the front end.

I agree that he should think of the sniffer as a distinct, reusable module. 
To me, this implies a procedural interface (yet another front end) to the 
library which in my mind gets back to threads and XMLRPC. Though I suppose 
the procedural interface could talk to a separate process using the socket 
interface...

Anyway, I think it's fair to say that both approaches will work, and both 
will present challenges to a beginner. The OP should choose based on his 
own preferences, biases and experience.

Kent