At 06:06 PM 3/12/2007 -0700, Bill Janssen wrote: >Phillip, > >I think there is a certain schizophrenia in Python between the older >original procedural/functional orientation (itself somewhat split), >and the newer-fangled (for Python) object style, between len(obj) and >obj.len().
Where you see schizophrenia, I see a set of mostly very wise choices, actually. >That's what makes it hard to evaluate the pros and cons >between adding generic functions (as Lisp did, to support its own >functional style), and adding interfaces (in whatever fashion) to >support the object-oriented view of life. And one of the benefits of Python is that it doesn't kowtow, Java-like to an exclusively "object-oriented view of life". Life involves more than objects, thank goodness. :) Btw, I don't think the evaluation is difficult at all, and in any case it's a false dichotomy. It's easy to implement interfaces and adaptation over generic functions, but much harder to do the reverse. So if we have to start somewhere, we might as well start with the more powerful feature that's less prone to error and abuse. In other words, if we must have interfaces, then let's steal more from Haskell (typeclasses and instances defined in terms of generic functions) and less from Java (ABCs and name-based abstract method collections). :) _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
