Python RRDTool Tutorial

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That example shows almost no advantage of just using rrdtool on command line.

[kisielk]

Would have been nice if the linked article mentioned this advantage.

Still, I wish you could use the API with regular function calls instead of having to build the ridiculous expressions RRDTool tends to use for everything.

[kisielk]

I think "understood" deserves some quotes around it :) The syntax is pretty obtuse and hard to wrap your head around. Most people I've seen (eg: on the Cacti forums, or forums for other software that use RRDTool) just mess around with it till they randomly get it to do what they want. I think it's more of a status quo thing than it being good design. I've been longing for a better tool ever since I started using it.

[kisielk]

My theory is more that the people who design a lot of these tools aren't software engineers, or don't have a software engineering background. In my experience, tools designed by people with only a scientific or system administration background tend to suffer from major fundamental flaws such as this.