On Jul 24, 6:41 am, Jordan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I'm a big Python fan who used to be involved semi regularly in > comp.lang.python (lots of lurking, occasional posting) but kind of > trailed off a bit. I just wrote a frustration inspired rant on my > blog, and I thought it was relevant enough as a wider issue to the > Python community to post here for your discussion and consideration. > > This is not flamebait. I love Python, and I'm not out to antagonise > the community. I also realise that one of the issues I raise is way > too ingrained to be changed now. I'd just like to share my thinking on > a misstep in Python's guiding principles that has done more harm than > good IMO. So anyway, here's the post. > > I've become utterly convinced that at least one criticism leveled at > my favourite overall programming language, Python, is utterly true and > fair. After quite a while away from writing Python code, I started > last night on a whim to knock up some code for a prototype of an idea > I once had. It's going swimmingly; the Python Image Library, which I'd > never used before, seems quick, intuitive, and with the all the > features I need for this project. As for Python itself, well, my heart > still belongs to whitespace delimitation. All the basics of Python > coding are there in my mind like I never stopped using them, or like > I've been programming in this language for 10 years. > > Except when it comes to Classes. I added some classes to code that had > previously just been functions, and you know what I did - or rather, > forgot to do? Put in the 'self'. In front of some of the variable > accesses, but more noticably, at the start of *every single method > argument list.* This cannot be any longer blamed as a hangover from > Java - I've written a ton more code, more recently in Python than in > Java or any other OO language. What's more, every time I go back to > Python after a break of more than about a week or so, I start making > this 'mistake' again. The perennial justification for this 'feature' > of the language? That old Python favourite, "Explicit is better than > implicit." >
It's damn useful for scoping. You can look in the body of your method and tell whether you are accessing local variables or instance variables. I'm a great fan of self and I'm afraid you're flogging a dead horse on that one. Your point about rich comparison (at least the == != problem) is fair. This one is fixed in Python 3 though I believe. Michael Foord -- http://www.ironpythoninaction.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
