"Jonathon Sisson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote > As a side note, does anyone have a good argument for access level > controls like C#?
These kinds of controls do help in large projects with many teams, often geographically dispersed. It is a form of documentation about the intent of the class designer, but also enforces that intent. This is espectially important during the early development of libraries where the internal representation is constantly evolving. The use of these access modifiers also provides an extra level of namespace control in some cases. However, that having been said I think anything beyond public/private is overkill. I actually like the Delphi 2 model (they have since added protected etc) was a good compromise where implementation section(*) attributes could be seen within a module even by other classes, but not outside the module. By combining that with public/private declarations in the class you had good control but much less confusion than in C++ etc. For smaller programs the whole mess is overkill and the Python approach of consenting adults makes much more sense IMHO. > I personally think it's a waste of time (much like > C#/ASP.NET...my apologies to any .NET fans out there...) The whole .NET thing is pretty neat, except that it could have all been done using Java and thius avoided a language war. But multiple languages compiling to a common runtime all with a single class library is powerful medicine... > end up doing is creating "service methods" that allow access > anyways, so > the margin of "security" is lost). Thoughts? And here I agree. So called getters/setters for every attribute are a JavaBeans kluge that eats away at the very essence of OOP - like so much in Java... Appropriate accessor methods are fine but they should be used with great caution, classes should expose behaviours not attributes! -- Alan Gauld Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
