[Web-SIG] PEP 444 Goals

[Alice Bevan–McGregor]

On 2011-01-07 01:08:42 -0800, chris.dent said:
> ... this particular goal [reduction of reimplementation / NIH] could 
> cover a large number of things from standardized query string 
> processing (maybe a good idea) to filters (which I've already expressed 
> reservations about).
> 
> So this goal seems like it ought to be several separate goals.

+1

This definitely needs to be broken out to be explicit over the things 
that can be abstracted away from middleware and applications.  Input 
from framework authors would be valuable here to see what they disliked 
re-implementing the most.  ;)

Query string processing is a difficult task at the best of times, and 
is one area that is reimplemented absolutely everywhere.  (At some 
point I should add up the amount of code + unit testing code that 
covers this topic alone from the top 10 frameworks.)

> The other option (than non-optional) for optional things is to remove them.

True; though optional things already exist as if they were not there.  
Implementors rarely, it seems, expend the effort to implement optional 
components, thus every HTTP server I came across having comments in the 
code saying "up to the application to implement chunked responses" 
indicating -some- thought, but despite chunked /request/ support being 
mandated by HTTP/1.1.  (And other ignored requirements.)

	- Alice.