Another try at Python's selfishness

[Terry Hancock]

On 04 Feb 2006 11:03:00 +0000
jth01 at arcor.de (Jens Theisen) wrote:
> n.estner wrote:
> > Yes, I 100% agree to that point!
> > But the point is, the current situation is not
> > newbie-friendly (I can tell, I am a newbie): I declare a
> > method with 3 parameters but when I call it I only pass
> > 2 parameters. That's confusing. If I declare a member
> > variable, I write: "self.x  = ValueForX", why can't I be
> > equally explicit for declaring member functions?
> 
> For someone new to OO in general it might as well be
> something good, so he   realises that there actually
> really is a hidden parameter. After all,   there is
> something to understand with "self", and this discrapency
> between   the number of arguments and parameters puts
> newbies to it.

Yes.  I have to say that I learned OOP at the same time as
Python (I made attempts with C++ that were moderately
successful, but beyond implementing new math objects, I
couldn't really see the benefit OOP then. I didn't "get"
it until I started using Python).

So, the idea of "the object itself is the first argument to
the function" made it implicitly clear to me what the heck
was this whole business about "methods".

I found the Python approach is very enlightening.

By contrast, Javascript seems positively obtuse. First, the
equivalent to "self" is a magically-appearing variable
called "this". But to make matters worse, this behavior is
repeated in many places -- you have to know when and where
magical variables like "this" and "prototype" appear, and
it's not at all obvious when reading other people's code.

(I suppose a formal introduction to Javascript would
explain these things -- but I note that many online "how to"
type documents skip them, partly because OOP is not very
popular with most casual Javascripters).

I tend to think of Javascript as "almost Python, but
stupidly designed", because of stuff like this.

My apologies to Javascript fans, I acknowledge that my
opinion is subjective. ;-)

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com