On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Russ P. <russ.paie...@gmail.com> wrote: (...)
> My understanding is that the vast majority of Python software is > provided as open source. Hence, I am a bit confused by all the talk > about the need for freedom and openness in Python. If data hiding were > enforced, and you need access to something marked as private, you can > just change it to public in the source code. What's the problem? > > Note: that change would be much easier to make if a "private" (or > perhaps "priv") keyword were used instead of the leading-underscore > rule. The former would require a change in only one place (per > attribute), whereas the latter would require a change of every > occurrence of the attribute. > > So "enforced" access restrictions are trivial to work around with open > source. But doesn't that mean that access restriction is pointless > because it cannot be enforced anyway? Of course not. In a team > project, the access restrictions will be enforced on the checked-in > code. You can play around with the internals all you want in your own > little world, but as when you are working with a team, you need to > adhere to the interfaces they define (if any). I'm going to say this very politely. Python IS NOT Java. --JamesMills -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list