Ten Essential Development Practices

[Robert Kern]

Michael Hoffman wrote:
> Aahz wrote:
> 
>>>One of these days I'm going to figure out how to embody "Namespaces are 
>>>one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!" Then I shall be 
>>>enlightened.
>>
>>What don't you understand about it?  (This is a serious question -- I
>>can think of several answers to give you, but want to know what focus is
>>needed first.)
> 
> I wasn't expecting a serious answer to this, but here goes.
> 
> First, I wasn't a Python user when namespaces were introduced. It's hard 
> for me to even imagine Python without namespaces. Did imported modules 
> just go into the same namespace as everything else? Yuck. It's too bad 
> this happened before there were PEPs so I could understand the design 
> and what came before.

I'm pretty sure that namespaces are fundamental to the design of Python. 
I don't think there was any "before namespaces."

> Is it the fact that Python is unimaginable without namespaces that makes 
> them such a honking great idea? Aren't they somewhat of an obvious idea? 
> Several other languages have them.
> 
> Was the implementation of namespaces easy or hard to explain?

It isn't just that Python has namespaces, but that they are the 
implementation for quite a lot of things. Modules: namespaces. Classes: 
namespaces. Instances: namespaces. Scope: namespaces. It's a very 
elegant way to handle a broad class of language features very consistently.

That said, I made a boo-boo. The Zen of Python is really a set of design 
principles (and some of them, like this one, are more specifically 
*language* design principles), not Essential Development Practices. 
That'll teach me to not RTFA.

-- 
Robert Kern
rkern at ucsd.edu

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
  Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
   -- Richard Harter