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I'm the author of a lightweight python ORM (peewee) and have a healthy respect for the work that goes into building this type of tool. PonyORM is quite a feat o

I'm the author of a lightweight python ORM (peewee) and have a healthy respect for the work that goes into building this type of tool. PonyORM is quite a feat of software engineering: it's developer(s) have done a great job. I would never use it, though, because decompiling Python generator expressions just feels so unpythonic.

Jake232 12y ago
The process going on under the hood (the whole disassemble / AST thing) is pretty unpythonic, however I would argue this then gives the developer the advantage of having a more pythonic query interface to the database on a higher level. Providing the things happening underneath don't break (and they haven't on me yet), and it generates efficient SQL (which is does), then I'll take the hidden complexity for the advantage of the higher level generator syntax.
- coleifer 12y ago
  Totally, and I know you are not alone. I think it's just a matter of boundaries, and when it comes to the data access layer of my applications I definitely want to feel very comfortable with the library I'm using. That's why SQLAlchemy is so popular, IMO, the implementation is rock-freekin-solid. The API may be more verbose, but you can understand it, and in doing so trust it to do the right thing.
acdha 12y ago
> I would never use it, though, because decompiling Python generator expressions just feels so unpythonic. Agreed but it really left me thinking that it'd be extraordinarily useful if Python gained some supported path for doing this – a standard way to get the AST for a generator expression would be really useful and a relatively general tool. A few years back I would have loved a cleaner way for a JSON decoder to know I only needed a couple of fields to avoid creating objects for everything else and it seems like there could be some very interesting optimizations for something like numpy/scipy as well. 1. I briefly liked LINQ awhile back before Microsoft's usual baroque design and poor QA convinced me that ASP.Net wasn't actually a time-savings. The LINQ-REST support seemed nice, albeit complicated, until you hit bugs where a change in one view would break unrelated views and running in the debugger "fixed" it.

Jake232 12y ago

The process going on under the hood (the whole disassemble / AST thing) is pretty unpythonic, however I would argue this then gives the developer the advantage of having a more pythonic query interface to the database on a higher level. Providing the things happening underneath don't break (and they haven't on me yet), and it generates efficient SQL (which is does), then I'll take the hidden complexity for the advantage of the higher level generator syntax.

coleifer 12y ago
Totally, and I know you are not alone. I think it's just a matter of boundaries, and when it comes to the data access layer of my applications I definitely want to feel very comfortable with the library I'm using. That's why SQLAlchemy is so popular, IMO, the implementation is rock-freekin-solid. The API may be more verbose, but you can understand it, and in doing so trust it to do the right thing.

acdha 12y ago

> I would never use it, though, because decompiling Python generator expressions just feels so unpythonic. Agreed but it really left me thinking that it'd be extraordinarily useful if Python gained some supported path for doing this – a standard way to get the AST for a generator expression would be really useful and a relatively general tool. A few years back I would have loved a cleaner way for a JSON decoder to know I only needed a couple of fields to avoid creating objects for everything else and it seems like there could be some very interesting optimizations for something like numpy/scipy as well. 1. I briefly liked LINQ awhile back before Microsoft's usual baroque design and poor QA convinced me that ASP.Net wasn't actually a time-savings. The LINQ-REST support seemed nice, albeit complicated, until you hit bugs where a change in one view would break unrelated views and running in the debugger "fixed" it.