How does Python's OOP feel?

[Teguh Iskanto]

Ikon wrote:
>I'm rather new to Python. I have PHP for my main language and I do
>some Java. They all have a very strict OO schema. As I red through
>Python's tutorial it seams it has nothing of those rules. No statical,
>abstract classes, functions, or variables.
>
>I wish someone, who has experience in both Java/PHP/C# and Python
>would tell me how mush better/worse is it to program in a language
>that misses most of the OO parts!
>

Here's a view from a seasonal programmer :

My day job is mostly doing some networking/security stuffs,
I only do programmings only if I had to (like creating
tools/automation/etc) or if no one in my network team was able/didn't
want to do it :(
Just a couple months back we had an engineering issue and we needed to
create/design a robust broker system that works in a background.
This system would take orders from different systems in a form of XML
and should be able to 'talk' to cluster firewalls (range in hundreds
of firewalls) and should be able to add/remove/check/verify/edit
objects on the individual firewall.

Knowing the complexity of the problem and the time constraint that we
had (my manager gave me 2.5 months to get this thing to work) , I had
no other resolution other than turning my self into python. At first I
was a bit doubtful but I kept moving on esp knowing that running a big
and complex project with perl would be like 'digging my own graveyard'
(especially in terms of modularity & maintenance ).

As it turned out, I enjoyed doing big projects with python especially
with its OOP style : simple & really easy --without having to go into
too much OOP details or bogged down with OOP theory-- it just works !
and  it's as easy as if you're running a 'plug & play' module and
playing LEGO. Long story short, I was able to present the whole system
in time and the system is now being used in production for a mission
critical F/W deployment ( I've used pyexpect,XML and Threading to
speed up the process )

The good thing about python is : it 'tastes' like what it was being
advertised (eg: Makes things easy and makes complex problem possible )
and I agree 100% with that. If a seasonal programmer like me find it
easy, then it should be much easier for you.

BTW: Before this project, I've programmed in C/PHP/Perl/Tcl but never
had a chance to really try Python in a full-blown OOP complex project.
HTH