Rethink "eager" vs. "lazy"

[krlmlr]

Already used elsewhere: https://duckdb.org/2024/04/02/duckplyr.html#eager-vs-lazy-materialization

Perhaps auto_collect ? Or auto_mat ?

[krlmlr]

Or strict ?

[krlmlr]

Or "cautious" and "daring"/"fearless"?

[krlmlr]

We should be able to materialize only as long as the result size does not reach a certain size (number of rows/cells/bytes):

• bound (or perhaps bounded):
  • bound = TRUE
  • bound = c(cells = 1000)
  • bound = c(rows = 100)
• tether:
  • tether = TRUE
  • tether = c(cells = 1000)
  • tether = c(rows = 100)

I'll go with "tether" because this is easy to search and replace later.

[maelle]

@krlmlr so do you agree that with the current usage of "lazy" at the R and at the C levels, it sounds there are two levels of laziness? Did I understand this correctly?

I think aligning the terms, on the R interface, with what dtplyr/dbplyr do, makes it easier for users to pick it up.

[maelle]

Maybe the opportunity to create a diagram 😸

[krlmlr]

Yes, there's eager vs. lazy (duckplyr is always lazy, dplyr is eager), and tethered vs. untethered (restrictions of automatic materialization, eager is always untethered by design).

[maelle]

I think a diagram would help then! Happy to help with the vignette but will need to ask more questions.

[maelle]

The word "tethered" here would explain something that is potentially surprising for users, and at least require some thought on their side. So I'd recommend choosing a word that's fairly common so that a non native speaker who maybe doesn't know "tethered" does not get one more obstacle on their way to understanding the concept. Also "tethered" might be easy to mistype (thetered etc).

Based on word frequency in Google's books corpus, "bound" sounds like a better choice but it has the drawback of being used for other things like limits.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=tethered%2Crestrained%2Cbound%2Ctied%2Croped%2Cblocked%2Cinhibited%2Ctempered&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3

[maelle]

I find "strict" not specific enough.

[maelle]

"frugal" is probably not common enough.

[maelle]

prudent like cautious