[Twisted-Python] documentation / kqueue / feedback

[Dr aio]

Hi Glyph

On 4/16/08, glyph at divmod.com <glyph at divmod.com> wrote:
>
>  Great!  The rest definitely doesn't sound like you love it though ... ;-)

Nope. If I lost my interest and positive attitude towards TM I'd have
left rather than subscribing to this list.
>
> Saying that there are "often" broken links is just about as pointless as saying that you "often" find bugs.  Without specifics, this is not useful information; the reason we have not fixed specific problems is not because we believe there are no problems anywhere.

Sorry. I simply assumed that you know your site and that those broken
links seem "natural" to you as everything is in flux.
>From now on I will report them.
>
>  You can do putChild to any resource, as long as you understand its lifecycle.  A "resource tree" is simply a tree ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_structure ) of resources ( http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/api/twisted.web.resource.IResource.html ).
>
>  Our documentation assumes, and will continue to assume, a certain level of familiarity with basic computer-sciency jargon;

This sounds as if you were to say "You don't fully understand TM ?
Dumbhead ! Learn the basics before opening your mouth."

Thank you, sir.

>  OK, a little later, I
>  have my first web server running an my first rpy works, spitting out
>  "test". Wow.
>

    >  Sounds like the docs are doing their job, then :).

Nope.  Working hours and hours through sometimes confusing
"documentation" to finally have a couple of lines of code working is
not really hot.


>>  ... As it is, it's a great and promising hobby but not a useful
>>  product.
>>
>
> Many, many people (including me!) disagree.
>
> I understand that you're frustrated, but this does nothing but >serve to weaken your position.  You have some valid criticism, but >when I read "twisted is not useful", I think that you are simply >mistaken.

So ? I didn't say that TM is not useful. I said it's not a useful
_product_. An important difference, beause a product is made to be
(more or less) useable out of the box. Lab experiments are immensily
useful but not for production.
Short: I didn't mean to insult or belittle TM but rather to express
that imho it could be more useable.

>  http://twistedmatrix.com/projects/core/documentation/howto/tutorial/index.htm
>
> Not perfect, perhaps, but I think it could definitely be described as > a "reasonable tutorial" to core Twisted concepts.

Sorry, half no.
I had no problem to understand TMs core concepts;
that's not the issue. I had the problem to find out how to
use TM.
One problem was that a lot of docs and tutorials (on the web, too) are
simply very old and also using different approaches.
Example: I'm just trying to understand how resources work. Suddenly
they talk about "application" and tap. That is confusing.

> If you were truly sorry, you would be contributing patches which fix the broken links and updates the documentation to be more recent.

Uhum, sir ... Me ? contributing doc. ? Frankly, this does not seem to
be your smartest idea so far * g
I'll gladly do as soon as I can walk more or less alone in TM, OK.


>  Kqueue seems to be vital to an event driven approach like TM, yet there are ...

> Kqueue is most definitely _not_ "vital" to something like Twisted.  It > is an optimization of a very specific part of a Twisted application on > a very specific platform.  *Most* realistic Twisted applications will
> be bottlenecked on application code long before something like
> kqueue (or epoll) will help.

Yes, to me it is vital. Modern AIO implementations haven't been
researched and worked on for thegeeky  fun of it. select() is just not
the answer to many of todays needs.

> Working from the amount of support
> from the community, most Twisted applications also don't run on
> FreeBSD.

Uh ? Means: "Use linux !" ? Irritating to read that.

I apologize if this response seems too harsh, but I am annoyed by
people who deciding for me what's important, what's the OS worth to be
supported and doubting my professional and intellectual capacity
because I dare to offer constructive criticism.

> I apologize if this response seems too harsh, but I am annoyed by > people seeing a pet feature (variously: good ideas like HTTP/1.1,
> kqueue, and Cocoa GUI support, bad ideas like "block on a
> Deferred", and core API thread safety)  which isn't too important in
> Twisted and then claiming it's "vital" to the project's success.  The
> project is succeeding, so clearly it is not vital: QED.  It may be
> important to you: that's great. Do some work to support it.  Once
> it's supported, buildbot will listen to its tests and it won't break
> again.


Glyph, I subscribed to this list, I spent hours and hours trying to
wrap my mind around TM, I read documents, tickets and annotations even
on quite remote sites - short, I invested a lot in TM.
 That *IS* an acknowledgement of your work. That *IS* a whole lot of
trust in your project.
And you tell me more or less bluntly that I'm stupid, unprofessional
and using a minority OS ?
At the same time you suggest that I, the newbie to TM contribute to
docs and even code ? Uhum. Sure.


> You might say, in fact, that Twisted is vital to a platform-specific
> tool like Kqueue, because otherwise almost nothing will use it.

Possibly, but I won't because I'd feel strange doing so, knowing quite
well that kqueue is by many considered to be _the_ AIO implementation
and knowing that kqueue is used - with excellent results - e.g. by
some servers (lighttpd, nginx, ...).

>  - How about getting 1 version of pykqueue properly running and into TM ?

I'll do as soon as I find some spare time. right now I need to get
some product made. Hopefully with TM.

> Twisted is very, very stable.

Great. Love to hear that.

>>  - How about writing some complete docs and tutorials? ...

> Yes, how about that?  You can write documentation on your own
> site, and we will link to it.  Or, you could contribute to the core
> documentation.

IF I can do my project with twisted I'll gladly give back.

> If you are interested in getting stuff in Twisted fixed, though,
> writing rambling complaints serves to do nothing but reduce our
> developers' already scarce motivation, make us think our work is
> not appreciated, and encourage us to spend time writing rambling
> responses like this one rather than fix the problems you're talking
> about.

a) Before fixing sth I should understand it pretty well. As a newbie
with TM I'm not in the position to fix things but to learn them -
ideally with some help.

b) I'm afraid humans tend to care most about the tools they work with.
Frankly, I'm not sure about my involvement with TM if it's big shots
treat newbies like this.

> (Which is not to say this has been a _complete_ waste of time.  If
> one out of every fifty people I write a message like this to
> understands what I'm saying and becomes a long-time contributor,
> then it's probably worth it.)

Which is not to say TM has been a _complete_ waste of time.  If I find
my way into it and get it working in time (Again: This is not my hobby
but my job);  then it's probably worth it.


Thanks so much