Not fully OO ?

[Kay Schluehr]

On 20 Sep., 23:07, "Aaron \"Castironpi\" Brady" <castiro... at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Sep 20, 3:22 pm, Kay Schluehr <kay.schlu... at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 20 Sep., 18:33, Bruno Desthuilliers
>
> > <bdesth.quelquech... at free.quelquepart.fr> wrote:
> > > The following definitions are AFAIK the only commonly accepted
> > > definitions about OO:
>
> > > 1/ an object is defined by identity, state and behaviour
> > > 2/ objects interacts by sending messages each other
> > > 3/ an OO program is made of interacting objects
>
> > > I let you find out whether Python meets these 3 definitions - and if
> > > Java does (hint : in Python, everything you can bind to a name is an
> > > object - this is not true in Java or C++).
>
> > This is correct but it detracts from a more general problem of
> > language "paradigms".
>
> > Assume you type
>
> > >>> 2+2
>
> > 4
>
> > Now you are free to interpret this as a simple, primitive arithmetic
> > operation but you can also claim that 2 sends an __add__ message to 2.
> > Hereby the state of the 2 objects are not altered but a new 4 object
> > is created. OO babble is more impressive isn't it?
>
> > Actually it is simply wrong in the mentioned case and here is the
> > proof:
>
> > def foo():
> >     return 2+2
>
> > import dis
> > dis.dis(foo)
>
> >   2           0 LOAD_CONST               2 (4)
> >               3 RETURN_VALUE
>
> > OO is a heuristic method used to understand the semantics of a
> > programming language. It can also inspire language design but as
> > you've rightly said: jugde yourself and see how far you get with it.
>
> > Applying OO on interpreter level is by no means a sign of a high
> > quality implementation whereas structuring programs in the large will
> > likely benefit from class based organization and encapsulation. Of
> > course one can also reverse the value hierarchy and find perverse joy
> > in having a pure OO language but apply monkey patching everywhere. I
> > suppose you know which language I'm talking about...
>
> It sounds like you think that you -can- write OO programs in Python,
> but you don't have to.  I agree.

The whole point of OO is providing high level ( system level ) not low
level ( interpreter level ) semantics. Partitioning a system into
isolated and communicating objects is a strong and important metaphor.
Recently there were some comments on the web that mentioned Erlang to
be pretty much OO in this respect although Erlang is functional and
has no base level notion of an "object". It's even well known that Joe
Armstrong holds low opinions about the entire object business.

Notice that I believe that the popular meme that OO is "bolted on"
Python has little if nothing to do with OO itself but with API
consistency. When people have to type len(x) instead of x.len() this
breaks their expectations on how the language has to behave.