python development practices?

[brueckd at tbye.com]

On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, it was written:

> development practices.  my question, i guess, is really whether python
> is efficient/effective if used without perfect development practices.
> if the documentation is a little out of date.  or if a certain
> interface isn't fully spec'ed out.  and the guy who wrote the code is
> out of town for a week.  are there good practices which safeguard
> against these situations?  (beyond perfect development process...)

I'm not convinced that the answer will vary that much from language to
language.

> oh, and the underscore thing seems a bit of a hack in that it
> contradicts one of the core principles of python.  decreasing
> readibility of the code in order to express class properties to the
> interpreter just screams "bolted on".

On the contrary, it increases readability and expressiveness. In C++ or
Java, you cannot look at a variable and say "oh, that's a non-public
member". You have to go find the variable declaration and see whether it
is declared public, protected, or private. What's up with that?

> help trap a simple typo in a seldom-encountered bit of code would be
> nice, without having to run fully exhaustive code tests.

Heehee.. hardware and software are mankind's most complex inventions. They
involve more details than we can focus on any given time, and for now at
least the cost-effective way to deal with that (in any language) is good
testing. Your code will be tested either way, it's just a question of
whether it is done by you or your customers.

-Dave