is python Object oriented??

[Hendrik van Rooyen]

<rd.....murray at bitdance.com> wrote:

> 
> You, sir, should be programming in some language other than Python.

Why?  - Python is object oriented, but I can write whole systems
without defining a single class.
By analogy, if data hiding is added to language, I could write a 
whole system without hiding a single item.
Conversely, the lack of data hiding is perceived as a weakness,
and IMO harms the advocacy of the language - This is proven
by your statement above, whereby you are driving a user away,
simply because the language, in one small aspect, does not
give him what he wants, and the tenor of this thread has been
very much: "That's how it is - like it or lump it", and no amount
of careful explanation of why people want the feature has cut 
any ice - It has all the time been countered with statements
about how the proponents of private attributes "don't need it",
(as if they are plain dumb), that an underscore convention is 
"just as good", (It isn't), that you could crack it if you really 
tried, (so what?), and other more specious reasons.

This is IMO an arrogant attitude - 

Surely if "we are all adults here" we have to accept that the 
other man has as much right to get what he wants, as 
anybody else, and that his reasons are as valid as those of 
anybody else.

Somehow I don't think that the way this thread has run, is
the way to "win friends and influence people"  - not 
positively, anyway.

- Hendrik