Does Python really follow its philosophy of "Readability counts"?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:07:50 -0800, Russ P. wrote:

> On Jan 19, 5:09 pm, Luis Zarrabeitia <ky... at uh.cu> wrote:
> 
>> Russ, I think _you_ are missing the point. If the attribute is already
>> public, why does it need properties? Why would a programmer go to the
>> trouble of adding them manually, just to get one level of indirection
>> for an already public attribute?
> 
> You don't understand the purpose of properties -- and you tell me that
> *I* am the one missing the point?


Well, I *thought* I did, and (unlike Bruno) I'm not hostile to the idea 
Russ is proposing. But I must admit it's not clear to me why Russ thinks 
it is a good idea to automatically turn this:

class Parrot(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.x = 1


into this:

class Parrot(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self._x = 1
    def getx(self):
        return self._x
    def setx(self, value):
        self._x = value
    x = property(getx, setx)


Because frankly, that's how I read Russ' explanation for what Scala is 
doing. Have I missed something? 



-- 
Steven