[Baypiggies] Possible talk: A Nondualist Alternative to Proxy Wrapper Theory

[Chris Clark]

+1

Ken Seehart wrote:
> If you read my previous email that was accidentally sent here instead 
> of python.org, you have some idea of what this is about.
>
> What is new is that I did some experimenting and came up with some 
> interesting results.  In fact I have implemented a proof-of-concept of 
> what I describe below.
>
> So let me know if you would like me to give a talk on this subject.
>
>
>       Overview:
>
> Anyone who has wrapped C or C++ libraries that contain methods which 
> use and/or return instances of the types that are being wrapped has 
> encountered what I call the /inheritance/proxy wrapper dilemma/.
>
> The general scenario is that we have a python extension library which 
> we wish to enhance by writing a python layer to add functionality and 
> improve syntax.  A good example is the wxPython library.  The most 
> obvious thing to do is to derive our classes from the extension 
> types.  This works fine until we have to deal with methods in the 
> extension library that create and return instances of the low level 
> types.  We want to only expose instances of our classes, not the low 
> level objects.
>
> At this point we do a little research and find out that we should be 
> using composition rather than inheritance.  So we make a proxy system 
> and inevitably wind up with a rather unwieldy pile of meaningless 
> wrappers on all of our methods.  This solution is generally considered 
> better than inheritance, but it creates a new set of problems.  Two 
> obvious problems associated with the proxy solution are the extra 
> function call overhead of the wrappers, and the necessity of 
> generating piles of boilerplate code.  Also there is a tendency for 
> the dualism between the proxy object and the raw object to be an 
> ongoing annoyance.  Once most of the bugs are weeded out, the proxy 
> system works adequately, but can't really be considered fun.
>
>
>       A Nondualist Alternative to Proxy Wrapper Theory:
>
> In this talk, I will demonstrate a technique for implementing wrappers 
> without proxies that nevertheless have all the desirable features that 
> we expect from composition based solutions, and all the simplicity we 
> had hoped for with simple inheritance.  We eliminate dualism along 
> with the unnecessary run-time overhead of wrappers.  The challenge is 
> to keep an open mind when faced with scary seeming violations of well 
> established object oriented theory, and focus on the practical 
> considerations.
>
> Time: 45 minutes to 1 hour.  Probably not for beginner night :-)  Let 
> me know if you are interested.
>
> - Ken Seehart
>