Python Scalability

[Tres Seaver]

David Cuthbert wrote:
> 
> Greetings, Pythoners...
> 
> I've been using Python for about five months, both at work and at home, and
> have found it to be a pleasure.  However (and you probably guessed this was
> coming... isn't everyone a critic? :-), I was wondering if there were any
> planned revisions to the type system for the next release.  I've noticed a
> few problems when scaling to medium-sized (~10-30 kloc) projects; these are
> probably specific to my style of coding, but I suspect that this may be
> happening to others, as well.
> 
> My biggest nit: those annoying AttributeError exceptions!  They usually crop
> up when I'm changing things (adding a method a set of classes) and don't do
> a thorough job (a rarely used class doesn't get the method added).  Then I
> call a function which uses the method, and -- oops! I passed in an object
> whose class didn't get modified.  Down comes the AttributeError...
> 
> Types are probably not the best thing to restrict in Python -- in
> particular, it would break objects that act like file objects (and since
> there is no common base such as C++'s istream or ostream to inherit from,
> this wouldn't work).  What I'm really interested in is whether a given
> function or object supports a specified interface:  e.g., I can safely call
> obj.m(1, 2) and get a list object back (or an exception).
> 
> At run time, trying to use an object which didn't meet the interface would
> generate an exception (not unlike the AttributeError exceptions I currently
> run into).  Static analysis, however, could be used at or before compile
> time to make sure that these types of errors do not happen.
> 
> The big advantage is that it would point out dumb errors that might be
> difficult to test.  Well, ok... the REAL big advantage would be that it is
> yet another way of making sure the customer doesn't call me and ask why my
> tool crashed and printed out a stack trace with an "AttributeError"
> exception. :-)
> 
> Aside from that, Python is a nice language to use.  Oh, sure, there's the
> strange "for" syntax, the "while 1" construct, and the whitespace-eating
> nanorobots I run into from time to time... :-)

Check out the Types SIG:

  http://www.python.org/sigs/types-sig/

-- 
=========================================================
Tres Seaver         tseaver at palladion.com    713-523-6582
Palladion Software  http://www.palladion.com