New to Python: Features

[Andrea Griffini]

On Wed, 6 Oct 2004 21:40:11 +0200, aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli)
wrote:

>Yeah, sigh, ditto here, in theory -- then I ended up as the software
>consultant for 200+ good programmers new to C++ and saw first-hand what
>nightmare it was sometimes to make stuff const-correct and how little in
>fact it bought you, so I got rather disillusioned about it.

This is interesting; I've come to the conclusion that
logical const-correctness is not worth in programming
as the cost it requires is higher than the payoff it
can bring back; but I was actually stared at like a
martian in c.l.c++.m when I said this.
I thought it was just because I'm used to work only as
a team of one and probably things were different if
working on big teams.

Now, if I understand you correctly in the "disillusioned"
part, looks like you found that the payoff is not worth
even in bigger teams...

Or may be you found just that adding const-correctness
*later* is a suicide ? That is quite acknowledged, my
opinion is instead that it's not even worth to put it
in from the beginning.

Unfortunately it's something you just can't refuse to
do in C++ because const correctness is tied to other
parts of the language and was used to try to patch
problems in other philosophically unrelated areas (I'm
talking about temporaries and implicit conversions).

Andrea