Abstract class (irrelevant blethering)

[Stephen Horne]

On Sun, 14 Sep 2008 21:19:06 +0200, Mr.SpOOn <mr.spoon21 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>I started to think to abstract classes just because in the paper it
>uses an abstract class in SmallTalk.

FWIW, it was obvious to me that you was using the term "abstract" in
the wider sense. You did say about the Smalltalk paper, after all. And
to me, any Python class that you treat as abstract is abstract. That
was always how the word "abstract" was used by Python users in the
past.

Now, it seems that there's a specific Python feature to enforce
abstractness. That's nice to know, and I'll have to do some reading.
As I said elsewhere, my Python's getting a bit rusty. But I doubt I'll
use it for the "overkill" reason. To me, the last important feature
added to Python was conditional expressions in 2.5 IIRC, and while I
love some features that others see as bloat, there's a lot that came
in earlier versions that I'm never likely to use.

For example, to me the term "property" is basically a trivial design
pattern or an object-oriented principle. I don't really see the need
for the language feature. I can define getter and setter methods all
by myself, and I don't really see the benefit of disguising them as
member variables. I used to like the idea, but now I'm more of an
occasional Python user, I can't be bothered looking up the syntax.

It's a strange role reversal - I used to be very enthusiatic about new
features back when others kept saying Python 1.5 is all you need.