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Subject: Re: Design thought for callbacks
From: Cem Karan <cfkaran2@gmail.com>
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Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2015 17:09:01 -0500
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On Feb 22, 2015, at 4:34 PM, Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> wrote:

> Cem Karan <cfkaran2@gmail.com>:
>=20
>> My goal is to make things as pythonic (whatever that means in this
>> case) and obvious as possible. Ideally, a novice can more or less
>> guess what will happen with my API without really having to read the
>> documentation on it.
>=20
> If you try to shield your user from the complexities of asynchronous
> programming, you will only cause confusion. You will definitely need =
to
> document all nooks and crannies of the semantics of the callback API =
and
> your user will have to pay attention to every detail of your spec.
>=20
> Your user, whether novice or an expert, will thank you for your
> unambiguous specification even if it is complicated.

Documentation is a given; it MUST be there.  That said, documenting =
something, but still making it surprising, is a bad idea.  For example, =
several people have been strongly against using a WeakSet to hold =
callbacks because they expect a library to hold onto callbacks.  If I =
chose not to do that, and used a WeakSet, then even if I documented it, =
it would still end up surprising people (and from the sound of it, more =
people would be surprised than not).

Thanks,
Cem Karan=