Unification of Methods and Functions

[James Moughan]

moughanj at tcd.ie (James Moughan) wrote in message news:<16752bcc.0405230518.2023328a at posting.google.com>...
> David MacQuigg <dmq at gain.com> wrote in message news:<pndva0hi800r5c132j22jv42djd36not8m at 4ax.com>...
> > On 22 May 2004 11:50:18 -0700, moughanj at tcd.ie (James Moughan) wrote:
> > 
> > >David MacQuigg <dmq at gain.com> wrote in message news:<9hgpa0d2iq5bb2ko4sngs5i6v4og90vqej at 4ax.com>...
> > >> On 19 May 2004 23:26:38 -0700, moughanj at tcd.ie (James Moughan) wrote:
> > >> >David MacQuigg wrote:
>  
> > >> I like your example, but not as a *substitute* for Animals_2.  It's
> > >> just too complex for non-CIS students at this point in the course.  I
> > >> think I understand your concerns about Animals_2.  I think the best
> > >> way to deal with those concerns is not by complicating the example, or
> > >> by taking out everything that could lead to problems, but rather by
> > >> pointing out the problems, and showing subsequent examples that fix
> > >> those problems, even at the expense of more complexity.
> > >> 
> > >> If you have a simple all-in-one alternative to Animals_2, show me.
> > >> 
> > >
> > >Again, clearly I have not communicated myself well - I mean a
> > >*completely* different example to the entire Animals approach.  The
> > >difficulty with writing a good Animals-type example comes from the
> > >things which it is trying to do, which aren't especially well
> > >expressed by a class-heirarchy.
> > 
> > What I am trying to do in Animals_2 is provide the simplest, most
> > learnable example of Python OOP, which has at least one of every basic
> > structure the students will encounter in a real program.  So I include
> > bound, unbound, and static methods, but not metaclasses or
> > descriptors.
> > 
> > Creating a good example like this is turning out to be more of a
> > challenge than I expected.  I'm fairly happy with Animals_2, but I
> > appreciate the "maintainability" problems you have pointed out, and
> > have added footnotes accordingly.  The examples in Learning Python are
> > too spread out in little pieces, and of course, no attention to the
> > issues you are concerned about.  If you know of another place I can
> > look for a good all-in-one teaching example, I am interested.
> > 
> 
> Just for the sake of example, this is one of the programs which I
> always write while learning a language, written in a way I'd use to
> demonstrate OO; all it does is read in a wordlist, then print out
> synonyms for user-inputed words.  
[snip]

Obviously the word 'synonym' should be replaced with 'anagram' in this
post. :)  Never give your classes cute names like Thesaurus then post
before breakfast...