HallÃchen!
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul Boddie) writes:
Torsten Bronger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At first, I was very pleased by Python's syntax (and still I am). Then, after two weeks, I learned about descriptors and metaclasses and such and understood nothing (for the first time in syntax I felt totally lost).
Well, I've been using Python for almost ten years, and I've managed to deliberately ignore descriptors and metaclasses quite successfully. I get the impression that descriptors in particular are a detail of the low-level implementation that get a disproportionate level of coverage because of the "hack value" they can provide (albeit with seemingly inappropriate application to certain problem areas).
I have exactly the same impression, but for me it's the reason why I feel uncomfortable with them. For example, I fear that a skilled package writer could create a module with surprising behaviour by using the magic of these constructs. I don't know Python well enough to get more specific, but flexibility almost always make confusing situations for non-hackers possible.
In that case I wouldn't worry about the magic which can be done in python but the magic which can be done in C (which many modules are written in). Sometimes I think people complain just to complain.
I know that such magic is inavoidable with dynamic languages, but
There's always a but.
descriptors will be used almost exclusively for properties, and therefore I think it would have been better to hard-wire properties in the interpreter rather than pollute the language with this sort of proto-properties (aka descriptors).
Have you heard of java ? maybe you'll like groovy.
TeX is extremely dynamic. It can modify its own scanner in order to become an XML parser or AFM (Adobe font metrics) reader. This is highly confusing for all but those five or six people on this planet who speak TeX fluently. Since I saw raw TeX, I dislike "proto-syntaxes" (or meta-syntaxes if you wish).
Now you're talking about extremes
Huy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
