[SciPy-Dev] usage of inspect.getargspec ?

[josef.pktd at gmail.com]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 10:42 AM,  <josef.pktd at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 10:37 AM, Gael Varoquaux
> <gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org> wrote:
>> On Fri, Jan 06, 2012 at 03:11:26PM +0000, Robert Kern wrote:
>>> > My view is that simple things should be simple --- especially for the occasional user.
>>
>>> My main problem with this view is that I don't think that whether you
>>> need a Hessian or not is the reasonable line to draw between "simple
>>> things" and "not so simple things". The problem with using
>>> getargspec() is that it is unreliable. It doesn't work for many
>>> reasonable inputs (like say a wrapper function that wraps the real
>>> function with one that takes *args,**kwds or extension functions or
>>> bound methods or objects with __call__). Knowing that you have one of
>>> these cases requires some rather deep experience with Python.
>
> Just to illustrate the problem: a question with inspect by a stackoverflow user
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7615733/too-many-arguments-used-by-python-scipy-optimize-curve-fit

and, I'm sorry if I sound grumpy at times.

I'm spending a large amount of time on code maintenance, and this
change promises several days of bug hunting, finding work-arounds and
answering questions on stack overflow for no clear benefits that I can
see, so I'd rather announce my opinion in advance.

Josef

>
> Josef
>
>>
>> I feel like Robert.
>>
>> In addition, I have always disliked the magic that traits did on the
>> number of arguments: I was always unsure of what was going on.
>>
>> Better explicit than implicit.
>>
>> My 2 euro-cents (kindly provided by the European Financial Stability
>> Facility)
>>
>> Gaël
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