> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Arthur > > What beyond sugar for leaving off a "()" when trying to retrieve a value > from a method are we accomplishing by using properties? I have tended to > look at properties mostly an accommodation to those coming from other > languages which have something similar, but never as something that was > core > to Python or a Pythonic approach to things. Am I missing something > fundamental?
The searching I do on this point only confirms to me that my own confusion is well shared - perhaps indicating this to be an area not totally OT for this forum. Ray Hettinger's "How-To Guide for Descriptors" http://users.rcn.com/python/download/Descriptor.htm covers properties, but the use case given is extremely unsatisfying - essentially offering a situation where a fundamental design change has been made to a program in mid-stream, and since properties were used in the initial design, the change can be made with little refactoring. Somehow I don't expect a programming language to accommodate the possibility of a midstream change in a programs design/intentions of the kind cited here. New design, and the expectation would be to need to recode to the new design. All within bounds, of course. OOP, I think, does try to address this issue to a reasonable degree. But the properties use case in this article is, to my intuition, a stretch beyond those reasonable bounds. I can't believe that a language or coding style intended to accommodate the range of possibilities for the kind of fundamental midstream redesign referenced in this use case could lead anywhere else but to some kind of madness. The fact is that I do use properties to a limited degree in PyGeo - the actual implementation of properties being trivial enough. Much less trivial is the why and when. The brain dead use of properties in PyGeo being definitely on my list for refactoring. Just not sure whether I should be consistent in avoiding them, or consistently using them, or when is which and which is when. Art _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig