Most of the time self doesn't bother me in the slightest. The one time it does bother me however, is when I am turning a function into a method. In this case, often I have many local variables which I actually want to be instance variables, so I have to add self to all of them. Of course, this is going to cause me some grief no matter which language I am using. If it was enough trouble, it wouldn't be hard to make a filter that converts my code automatically.
In other cases it's not a big deal. When I program in java I write "this." on everything anyway, as my Java teacher recommended. So for me it's not different than java, the way I write it. I don't particularly like too much use of special characters, such as the @ in ruby. I actually don't like the @ in python for decorators either. So ugly :( I would not like to see a special character or leading dot used for attributes for this reason. Human readable text is nice, because even if you haven't programmed in the language for a while, you don't have to remember as many special symbols. I think using s. is your best bet, but for me, s is then just another special character that needs to be memorized, whereas self. is self descriptive. One persons trash is another person's treasure. On Nov 23, 2007 4:56 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > Python uses "self" (and textual notation when possible) because its > designers consider that symbols reduce readability. Self won't go > away. :-P > > The issue is related to the first and seventh lines in The Zen of > Python, > > 1. "Beautiful is better than ugly" > 7. "Readability counts." > > My opinion is that "self" is a minor issue in python that we can all > live with. > > > On Nov 21, 9:51 pm, braver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is there any trick to get rid of having to type the annoying, > > character-eating "self." prefix everywhere in a class? Sometimes I > > avoid OO just not to deal with its verbosity. In fact, I try to use > > Ruby anywhere speed is not crucial especially for @ prefix is better- > > looking than self. > > > > But things grow -- is there any metaprogramming tricks or whatnot we > > can throw on the self? > > > > Cheers, > > Alexy > > -- > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
