writing and reading from files

[Etan Reisner]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 06:24:39AM +1100, Bron Gondwana wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:10 -0500, "Etan Reisner" <pidgin at unreliablesource.net> wrote:
<snip>
> It's also acceptable as a simple and easy to test way to proof-of-concept
> your design in a limited environment like, I dunno, "my first plugin"[tm].

No one said it wasn't an acceptable way to test things, or prototype
something, or anything else. I said it "is likely to be much more work
than is a good idea". And have since clarified that that statement should
have been read as having "(for a pidgin plugin)" tacked on the end.

<snip>

> > Again, the assumption is that blocking for an out-of-band process is not
> > an acceptable solution for just about anything in a pidgin plugin. There
> > are of course exceptions and it is up to the plugin author to understand
> > their problem domain well enough to make those decisions.
>
> ... but man, of all the projects I use and watch, this has to be the one
> which is the most hostile to new people who come along without a perfect
> understanding of the issues involved and who want to start with something
> relatively simple that, I dunno, solves their problems.

If you read hostility in my initial email you should read it again and
point out to me exactly what about it was so "user hostile". Because I
don't see it at all. I made a suggestion that perhaps his current approach
was not the best one for his goal (without knowing what his exact goal
was, but with the knowledge that this was not his first pidgin question
and that perhaps some design guidance might be appreciated).

You appear to have interpreted my suggestion and attempts to help as an
attack and an insult (or something to that effect) and I honestly cannot
see how you read that into my message.

(I will admit that my second email was harsher (and more direct) than my
first, but it was in no way hostile. You will also note that I asked if
there was something about this process that I had missed which would make
my assumptions about the process invalid. Such a fact could have been that
the remote process worked on the file in place, was local-only, used safe
file copy/rewrite semantics, etc.)

> I bet you if you gave the author of the initial request an interface that
> wrote each incoming message to, say, an XML file with the routing
> information and message contents in a standard format, and exec()ed a
> configurable path with that filename as the first argument - then pidgin
> blocked until the program finished and read back the same file - they'd
> be happy.  And they wouldn't notice the blocking in practice.

So, having the gift of having seen the original authors response email, I
can say that, in fact, you would have been wrong about this assertion. And
that your assumption is, in general, a bad idea because it means that
people who may not know to take factors like this into account aren't
given the opportunity to consider them by having them pointed out to them.
I would much sooner get a response of "yeah, I know about those issues but
they don't apply here because of X, Y, and X" or "yeah, thanks I know but
they can't be avoided" then to find out much later down the line that
these sorts of issues were never considered or addressed (and now are
possibly going to cause many more design problems or a lack of actual
usability of the plugin).

You appear to prefer deference to a presumed complete understanding of
these issues, and are free to do so, but I would prefer, in the future, if
you would restrain yourself from assuming a position of superiority and a
tone of condescension when addressing me because you dislike my approach.

> Bron.
> --
>   Bron Gondwana
>   brong at fastmail.fm

    -Etan