On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 10:40 AM, Erik <pyt...@lucidity.plus.com> wrote: > Hi Chris, > > On 15/03/16 23:16, Chris Angelico wrote: >> >> So URL shorteners are invaluable tools. > > > Perhaps, and in the specific - transient - use-cases you describe that's > fine. The problem I have with them is that they are a level of indirection > controlled by a third party. If the source (let's say this list) has a > message containing a link to something on the target which is still > available via a "shortened" URL, then if the shortening service goes > offline, the link is dead. Even though the target is still there. > > People complain about the use of pastebin in this list for showing code > fragments. It's the same thing - one URL shortening (indirection) service > goes offline and a ton of links are suddenly silenced. It's like a > disturbance in the force ;)
I agree, it's a risk. Any indirection adds that. So the benefit has to be weighed against this inherent cost. > FWIW, I also have an issue with services that convert your ASCII text into > unicode such that the resulting glyphs are still things a human reader will > understand as substitutes for the original text but which can't be easily > searched/grepped. Oh, I totally agree. Your text should be your text. >> However, I'm not sure what >> this one is that others aren't. > > > Vinicius didn't say his code was anything different. > > He said he _WANTED_ to do something different _BUT_ realised ideas are hard > to come by, _SO_ he developed some URL-shortening software and then shared > it. Yeah, but there's usually _something_ different :) > I see it as a learning exercise on his part, and that's great. Absolutely. As such, it's excellent. I often like to make a small change when I reimplement, though - something that I thought was ill-designed in the original, or maybe just a simple thing of integration somewhere (eg a little text editor embedded in a larger program). ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
