[akkartik]

It's a reasonable tradeoff for a specific library. But if he's trying to claim that the entire eco-system should put the API above all, then it's worth asking how the 5% use case integrates with this worldview. If I suddenly find I need multiple IPs, do I now need to switch my http client library?

[emidln]

No, you need to do what anyone who has fringe requirements has to do: patch the library yourself. Modify urllib3's (requests uses this as a go between for httplib/http.client) to accept/pass on the source_address that the HTTPConnection from httplib allows and then modify requests to accept/pass this on. This will take, at first glance, maybe half a day with some tests (likely much faster, but I'll allow that there might be something more involved than modifying urllib3's HttpConnectionPool and the accompanying changes for requests's Request model.

[Nagyman]

The slides don't mention this, but he did touch on having layered designs so the 5% remains possible. However, the primarily exposed api shouldn't get sacrificed for said features. By conceding on a feature that makes the API less usable, you sacrifice more than not having it in the first place (confusion, complexity). Even the GH Issue linked shows a possible solution to the issue using urllib2, which is just a layer down.

[codexon]

I don't understand, what is not usable about being about do to this:

requests.get('news.ycombinator.com', sourceip='1.2.3.4')