Vinicius Mesel wrote: > I'm a 16 year old Python Programmer that wanted to do something different. > But, like we know, ideas are quite difficult to find. > So I decided to develop a URL Shortener to help the Python community out > and share my coding knowledge, and today the project was launched with its > first stable version. So if you want to see the software working, go check > it out at: http://wp-a.co/ Or if you want to see the source code to > contribute and help the project: https://github.com/vmesel/WP-A.CO
While I commend your efforts, I think that you should have chosen another topic for your project. It is also hard for me to see in which way this is “something different” – are there not enough “URL Shorteners” already? –, and how a “URL Shortener” could “help the Python community out”. Because I think that “URL Shorteners” are a bad idea in the first place: One never knows for how long a time a “short URL” works, who is listening in the middle, and what they are referring to, until one uses them at which point it is too late. If a “short URL” expires, there is *no way* to retrieve the referred content; when a *real* URI breaks, there are services like the Internet Archive and the Google cache to help one out. So when I see a “short URL”, I tend not to use it. I find it particularly disturbing that in wpa.py:processaURL() your software apparently stores the original URIs in an SQL database; in the case of your proof-of-concept, in *your* database. So *you* are listening in the middle then. I cannot be sure because I have not thought this through, but with aliases for common second-level domains, and with text compression, it should be possible to do this without a database. So sorry, because of that already, I will certainly not use or recommend your service. “Leave others the privacies of their minds and lives. Intimacy remains precious only insofar as it is inviolate.” ─Surak And with the exception of Twitter-ish sites that place a limit on message length, there really is *no need* for shorter URIs nowadays. (HTTP) clients and servers are capable of processing really long ones [1]; electronic communications media and related software, too [2]. And data storage space as well as data transmission has become exceptionally inexpensive. A few less bytes there do not count. Instead, there *is* a need for *concise*, *semantic* URIs that Web (service) users can *easily* *remember*. It is the duty of the original Web authors∕developers to make sure that there are, and I think that no kind of automation is going to ease or replace thoughtful path design anytime soon (but please, prove me wrong): <https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/uri-choose> __________ [1] <http://stackoverflow.com/a/417184/855543> [2] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#appendix-C> -- PointedEars Twitter: @PointedEars2 Please do not cc me. / Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
