python improvements (Was: Re: New Language)

[Courageous]

> 1. I'd like an equivalent to perl's "use strict" pragma.  It's annoying to
> have to be so paranoid about making a typo in a variable name.  I'd like
> the compiler to be able to catch those errors for me.

This would be useful, albeit for instance vars, you can already do it,
by implementing your own __getattr__ and __setattr__ methods, IIRC.
For that matter, you could probably fudge something like this by
overridding the getattr/setattr methods of the local module namespaces,
albeit I'm pretty new at python and haven't tried it, so... :)
 
> 2. I'd like the ability to specify that a certain parameter or variable is
> of a given type.

I think that it is inevitable that this sort of optional, declarative
information becomes available in python, particularly as pressure for
mature compiler technology increases.

> 3. I'd like to allow for the formal declaration of protocols a la
> Objective-C.  A protocol is a set of method calls that an object can claim
> to support or not.

Well, unless I'm misunderstanding you, you can sort of do this now by
implementing methods on a baseclass which, if not overridden, throw
an exception... ?

> Nuff said.  Python kicks ass.  I'm a convert!

What you said. :)-



C/