Understanding the pythonic way: why a.x = 1 is better than a.setX(1) ?

[Marco Bizzarri]

Sorry... pressed enter but really didn't want to.

As I said, let's say I have a class

class A:
    def __init__(self):
         self.x = None



Python makes the decision to allow the developers to directly access
the attribute "x",  so that they can directly write: "a.x = 1", or
whatever; this has for me the unfortunate side effect that if I write,
for example "a.y = 1", when I really wanted to write "a.x = 1" no one
cares about it, and I'm unable to spot this error until later.

Of course, I know that while I'm fresh, I've a good knowledge of the
code, and anything else, I will be able to avoid such stupid errors;
however, I'm afraid of the times when I'm tired, when I have to put my
hands on the code of someone else, and so on.

Please, understand that I'm not stating that python is wrong... after
all, if it is wrong, I can move to a language like Java, which has a
different approach on it. I'm really very interested in reading past
discussion on it, if they are available.

Regards
Marco



On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 12:57 PM, Marco Bizzarri
<marco.bizzarri at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's say I've a class a, where I can write:
>
>
>
> --
> Marco Bizzarri
> http://notenotturne.blogspot.com/
> http://iliveinpisa.blogspot.com/
>



-- 
Marco Bizzarri
http://notenotturne.blogspot.com/
http://iliveinpisa.blogspot.com/