Metaprogramming Example

[andrew cooke]

On Apr 18, 4:48 am, Bruno Desthuilliers <bruno.
42.desthuilli... at websiteburo.invalid> wrote:
[...]
> Practically, this means that (amongst other niceties) :
> - you can define functions outside classes and use them as instance or
> class methods
> - you can add/replaces methods dynamically on a per-class or
> per-instance basis
> - you can access the function object of a method and use it as a function
> - you can define your own callable types, that - if you implement the
> appropriate support for the descriptor protocol - will be usable as
> methods too

ok, that's convincing (i had thought the majority of these were
already
possible, albeit with some kind of hard-coded "magic" behind the
scenes).

[...]
> > by referring to the titanic
> > i didn't mean that python was a disaster, rather that the "iceberg" is
> > still there (i am not 100% sure what the iceberg is, but it's
> > something
> > to do with making namespaces explicit in some places and not others).
>
> I guess you're thinking of the self argument, declared in the function's
> signature but not "explicitly passed" when calling the method ?

not really.  more to do with when namespaces (i am not sure i have the
right term - the dictionary that provides the mapping from name to
object)
are explicit or implicit.  for example, python has closures (implicit
lookup) and "self" (explicit lookup).

but as i said, i don't have a clear argument - something just feels
"odd".
at the same time, i know that language design is a practical business
and so this is probably not important.

finally, thank you for pointing me to sql alchemy (i think it was
you?).
it really is excellent.

andrew