Prothon Prototypes vs Python Classes

[John Roth]

"Paul Prescod" <paul at prescod.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.10.1080485351.20120.python-list at python.org...
> John Roth wrote:
>
> > It's certainly true that in a prototype based language all objects
> > exist: there are no objects that the compiler deals with but does
> > not put into the resulting program. And it's quite true that it does
> > open up the floodgates for a lot of messiness.
>
> Ummm. This is also true for Python. Python classes exist at runtime.
>
> foo = 5
>
> class foo: # oops. I've overwritten foo
> def bar(self):
> pass
>
> print foo
> print dir(foo)
> print type(foo)
>
>   Paul Prescod

Sure. But misusing classes as instances is quite rare in
practice, and plugging members into instances is also
quite rare in practice. Python's highly dynamic nature
opens it up to a lot of difficulty in principle, but most
deveopers seem to be quite disciplined in their use of
dynamism.

The difficulty here is simply that there is no way of
isolating a base object that is supposed to be the platform
for other objects from objects that are supposed to be
updatable with new behavior.

The higher a tower you want to build, the firmer the
foundation. Conventions help, but if the conventions
are helped along by the language, that's even better.

John Roth
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