About classes and OOP in Python

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 18:20:13 +0000, Casey Hawthorne wrote:

>>I think it's important not to wrongly confuse 'OOP' with ''data hiding'
>>or any other aspect you may be familiar with from Java or C++. The
>>primary concept behind OOP is not buzzwords such as abstraction,
>>encapsulation, polymorphism, etc etc, but the fact that your program
>>consists of objects maintaining their own state, working together to
>>produce the required results, as opposed to the procedural method where
>>the program consists of functions that operate on a separate data set.
> 
> Isn't "inheritance" an important buzzword for OOP?

Of course inheritance is an important and desirable feature of OOP, but it
isn't a necessary feature. Python built-in objects like int, list etc.
were still objects even before you could inherit from them.

I don't know of many other OO languages that didn't/don't have
inheritance, but there was at least one: Apple's Hypertalk, back in the
late 80s early 90s.



-- 
Steven.