[Tutor] Shelve del not reducing file size

[Eric Brunson]

Andreas Kostyrka wrote:
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> Barton David wrote:
>   
>> I mean no offense and lay no blame. It's simply that I feel like I've
>> been led up a nice gentle beach and suddenly I'm dodging boulders at the
>> bottom of a cliff.
>>
>> I've learned to program with Python (and can hardly conceive of a better
>> language to be honest)- and I still think the core language is great:
>> elegant, easy to use and brilliantly documented.
>>
>> But the more I explore the standard library and third party modules, the
>> more I run into trouble: a chaotic library structure that seems to
>> conceal capabilities rather than promote them, similar modules that
>> don't work in similar ways, a whole new level of opaque programming
>> lingo that makes me feel excluded, behaviours that I don't understand,
>> don't want, and that I can't find documentation to explain, and so on.
>>
>> I guess it's not Python's fault: I'm guess I'm just too stupid. But I'm
>> just getting really disenchanted. Sorry.
>>     
>
> No, the Python documentation is sometimes brief. And some places are not
> really documented (like some dusty corners in the hotshot profiler). But
> OTOH, it's also hard on newbies, because it usually documents but does
> not explain what a module does, e.g., it often expects the reader to
> know the protocols involved, sometimes it expects the reader to know
> computer science basics.
>   

It seems like new programmers today expect to be spoonfed their 
information like they were in grammar school.  They don't know what it 
is to hack a Makefile to get a package to compile or break out an RFC to 
understand a protocol.  If you don't understand something and the 
documentation is lacking, then strap on a pair and read the source, 
write some test cases, dig a little.  In our environment most of the 
code you'd have to read is just more Python, anyway.

Just me being a grouchy old programmer.  In my day we had to program in 
4 feet of snow, uphill... both ways!

> Andreas
>
>   
>>  
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kent Johnson [mailto:kent37 at tds.net] 
>> Sent: 27 July 2007 13:07
>> To: Barton David
>> Cc: tutor at python.org
>> Subject: Re: [Tutor] Shelve del not reducing file size
>>
>> Barton David wrote:
>>     
>>> *sigh* I'm really going off Python.
>>>       
>> In what way is it Python's fault that the dbm database doesn't reclaim
>> disk space?
>>
>> Kent
>>
>>
>>