Class Variable Access and Assignment

[Steve Holden]

Antoon Pardon wrote:
> Op 2005-11-05, Steven D'Aprano schreef <steve at REMOVETHIScyber.com.au>:
> 
>>On Fri, 04 Nov 2005 12:10:11 +0000, Antoon Pardon wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>There are good usage cases for the current inheritance behaviour. I asked
>>>>before what usage case or cases you have for your desired behaviour, and
>>>>you haven't answered. Perhaps you missed the question? Perhaps you haven't
>>>>had a chance to reply yet? Or perhaps you have no usage case for the
>>>>behaviour you want.
>>>
>>>There are good use cases for a lot of things python doesn't provide.
>>>There are good use cases for writable closures, but python doesn't
>>>provide it, shrug, I can live with that. Use cases is a red herring
>>>here.
>>
>>Is that a round-about way of saying that you really have no idea of
>>whether, how or when your proposed behaviour would be useful?
> 
> 
> I am not proposing specific behaviour. Because if I do, you will
> just try to argue how much worst my proposed behaviour is.
> 
> Whether or not I can come up with a better proposal is irrelevant
> to how sane the current behaviour is.
> 
If you can't provide a superior alternative then you have little right 
to be questioning the present behavior. Honestly, you are like a child 
with a whistle who keeps blowing the whistle to the annoyance of all 
around it simply because it likes being able to make the noise, and 
causing the annoyance.
> 
>>Personally, I think that when you are proposing a major change to a
>>language that would break the way inheritance works, there should be more
>>benefits to the new way than the old way. 
> 
> 
> How many times do I have to repeat myself. I'm not proposing a change
> to the language. 
> 
So you have a clear impression that Python's current behavior is 
unsatisfactory enough to be called "unsane" which, when challenged, you 
insist simply means not at the extreme end of some imaginary sanity 
scale you have constructed for the purpose if bending English to your 
will. And you refuse to propose anything further towards the sane end of 
the scale because people will try to argue that your proposal would be 
worse than the existing behavior. Good grief, I though I was dealing 
with an adult here, but I must be mistaken.
> 
>>>>Some things are a matter of taste: should CPython prefer <> or != for not
>>>>equal? Some things are a matter of objective fact: should CPython use a
>>>>byte-code compiler and virtual machine, or a 1970s style interpreter that
>>>>interprets the source code directly?
>>>>
>>>>The behaviour you are calling "insane" is partly a matter of taste, but it
>>>>is mostly a matter of objective fact. I believe that the standard
>>>>model for inheritance that you call insane is rational because it is
>>>>useful in far more potential and actual pieces of code than the behaviour
>>>>you prefer -- and the designers of (almost?) all OO languages seem to
>>>>agree with me.
>>>
>>>I didn't call the model for inheritance insane.
>>
Well you are repeatedly call one aspect of the Python inheritance model 
insane. You appear to feel that repetition of an argument will make it 
more true, which is sadly not the case.

>>Antoon, I've been pedanted at by experts, and you ain't one. The behaviour
>>which you repeatedly described as not sane implements the model for
>>inheritance. The fact that you never explicitly said "the standard OO
>>model of inheritance" cuts no ice with me, not when you've written
>>multiple posts saying that the behaviour of that standard inheritance
>>model is not sane.
> 
> 
> I haven't written that once. You may think that you can imply it from
> what I wrote, but then that is your inferance and not my words.
> 
Nonsense.
> 
>>>>The standard behaviour makes it easy for code to do the right thing in
>>>>more cases, without the developer taking any special steps, and in the
>>>>few cases where it doesn't do the right thing (e.g. when the behaviour
>>>>you want is for all instances to share state) it is easy to work
>>>>around. By contrast, the behaviour you want seems to be of very limited
>>>>usefulness, and it makes it difficult to do the expected thing in
>>>>almost all cases, and work-arounds are complex and easy to get wrong.
>>>
>>>Please don't make this about what I *want*. I don't want anything. I
>>>just noted that one and the same reference can be processed multiple
>>>times by the python machinery, resulting in that same reference
>>>referencing differnt variables at the same time and stated that that was
>>>unsane behaviour.
>>
But you clearly don't perceive this as being related to Python's 
inheritance mechanism, presumably because you aren't prepared to accept 
that an instance inherits names from its class just like a class 
inherits names from its superclass.

>>"Unsane" now?
>>
>>Heaven forbid that I should criticise people for inventing new words, but
>>how precisely is unsane different from insane? In standard English,
>>something which is not sane is insane.
> 
> 
> Well maybe English works differently from dutch, but I thought there
> were a whole lot of gradation between sane and insane. And not being
> sane IMO just means not being at one end of the extreme while being
> insane meant to be at the other end of the extreme.
> 
> So when something doesn't make complete sense, instead of it making
> no sense at all, I would think that wording it as unsane instead of
> insane resembles best what I intended to mean.
> 
Ah, so Python isn't the only language you find insufficiently 
expressive. I normally give some leeway to those whose first language 
isn't English, but this particular bloody-mindedness has gone on long 
enough. I'd call your behavior imhelpful here.

So, are we talking about 0.1% insane, 10% insane or 90% insane. For 
someone who is so pedantic you are being insanely vague here. You can 
hardly blame people for concluding you just like the sound of your own 
voice (metaphorically speaking).
> 
>>If you're just trolling, you've done a great job of it because you fooled
>>me well and good. But if you are serious in your criticism about the
>>behaviour, then stop mucking about and tell us what the behaviour should
>>be. Otherwise your criticism isn't going to have any practical effect on
>>the language at all.
> 
> 
> I wasn't trolling. I just threw in an off hand remark. That you got so
> heated up about that remark is not my responsibility. I'm not trolling
> because I'm willing to defend my remark and I don't intend to get
> people to get heated up about it. I just don't hold back because
> people may get heated up about it.
> 
The defense of your original remark implies very strongly that it wasn't 
offhand, and that you are indeed trolling. Hence the reduction in the 
frequency of my replies. You make it more and more difficult to take you 
seriously. Particularly since you have now resorted to a defense which 
involves refusing to define a non-existent word in any but the vaguest 
terms - you are trying to specify a position on the imaginary continuum 
of sanity, but you don't say how close to which end you are trying to 
specify. This puts you somewhere between "barmy" and "crackpot" on my 
own personal scale.
> 
>>If you are serious about wanting the behaviour changed, and not just
>>whining, then somebody has to come up with an alternative behaviour that
>>is better.
> 
> 
> If I would be whining I would want the behaviour changed. I would just
> keep complaining about it until someone else would have changed it.
> 
Instead you just keep complaining about it, full stop. Since we are all 
now fully aware of your opinions, couldn't you just shut up, or do we 
have to send you to your room without any supper? Whine, whine, whine.

> Sure I would prefer it changed, but it is not that I *want* it to
> change. I'll happily continue with python if it doesn't change.
> 
That's sort of a pity. At this stage I'd recommend Ruby just to be rid 
of the incessant twaddle you come up with to defend your throwaway ideas.

> Maybe when someone mentions something negative about python,
> you shouldn't translate that into someone demanding a change
> in python.
> 
> 
>>If not you, then who? Most of the folks who have commented on
>>this thread seem to like the existing behaviour.
> 
> 
> Well fine, in that case it won't even change if I do come up with
> an alternative proposal. So why should I bother?
> 
Absolutely no reason at all. It's already transparently obvious that you 
don't have a better alternative and you continue to troll simply because 
it validates your particular (and increasingly peculiar) needs.

Every time I reply to you my spell checker looks at your name and shows 
me a dialog with an "ignore all" button on it. I have this increasing 
suspicion that it's trying to tell me something.

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
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