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Re: pkg.m status and question
From: |
Rik |
Subject: |
Re: pkg.m status and question |
Date: |
Fri, 10 Jan 2020 07:35:57 -0800 |
On 01/10/2020 02:51 AM, Juan Pablo Carbajal wrote:
>> I'm sensitive to Mike's original argument. The future is hard to predict,
>> and deciding today on the number, name, and type of fields that will exist
>> for all time is too difficult. In some manner, the architecture must
>> support change. I am agnostic as to whether that flexibility is because
>> each struct lives alone as a cell element, or because there is a modifiable
>> "UserDefined" field.
> Predicting the future here has no role. the point is that you need to
> define a standard for your package distribution and management system.
> Goals of the standard:
> 1. Easy to extend (here are all your concerns about the future
> covered, there is no attempt to predcit the future [1], but to be able
> to adapt to it)
> 2. Uniform and stable. The uniformity allows us to produce code that
> anybody can use for they packages (if the follow the standard). The
> stability is just a desire to avoid too much maintenance
>
> Hence, the DESC fiel should have standard (required) fiels (it has
> already), and the user can add more arbitrary fields, but those will
> be parsed inot a uniform field (that is always present in the program
> representation of the DESC file (e.g. a structure)) which could be
> called "UserDefined". Standard code will not parse that field, but the
> user's functions can use it in the context of their packages.
>
> I do not think we have a differnet opinon here, but it seems you are
> opposing to something in my proposal that I cannot pin-down.
I think you may be arguing with someone else. I only wrote one e-mail on
the subject which was the one you quoted. As I remarked, I don't care
about the actual implementation (cell array, DESC file, etc.) as long as
the software architecture chosen is flexible rather than brittle. A
current example of the trend from another area of computer science is
databases, where programmers are moving away from the fixed schema of
relational databases and implementing NoSQL dabatases instead.
>
> [1] It is funny that you guys are worried about the future,
I'm not one of "you guys" whoever they are. I haven't been following this
thread except for the one general comment I made.
--Rik
- Re: pkg.m status and question, (continued)
Re: pkg.m status and question, Philip Nienhuis, 2020/01/06
Re: pkg.m status and question, Rik, 2020/01/07