"Battleship" style game

[Zvezdan Petkovic]

On Feb 25, 2009, at 3:54 PM, Shawn Milochik wrote:
> It is true that it would be fewer lines of code with the same
> functionality, but it's better practice to have that framework in
> place so that any changes made in the future wouldn't break any of the
> code accessing my class. Obviously this is a fairly simple game that
> has a fixed set of rules, but I'm trying to cultivate good habits, and
> I don't think that doing it this way is anti-Pythonic.

Well, they are trying to help you with the best practices.
You offered the code for review and they reviewed it.
Whether you'll accept what they say or deny it is your call, of course.

FWIW, the Pythonic way would be:

 >>> class Ship(object):
...     def __init__(self, length):
...         self._length = length
...     @property
...     def length(self):
...         return self._length
...
 >>> s = Ship(5)
 >>> s.length
5
 >>> # notice how the property is read-only which is what you wanted
 >>> s.length = 7
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: can't set attribute
 >>> ^D

Using @property decorator makes a read-only property.  If you need a  
read/write property there are several ways to define setter and  
deleter methods with or without decorators.

I hope you see that

	x = s.length
	s.position = y

is a completely different style than

	x = s.get_length()
	s.set_position(y)

Most of the people who program in Python prefer the first style above.