[newbie] Looking for a good introduction to object oriented programming with Python

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:19:31 +0100, lipska the kat wrote:

> On 07/08/12 06:19, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
[...]
>> But what *really* gets me is not the existence of poor terminology. I
>> couldn't care less what terminology Java programmers use among
>> themselves.
> 
> I'd be most grateful if you could park the whole 'This person is a 'Java
> developer so must be a moron thing' it's getting a bit wearing.

Lipska, it's not always about you.

I've been hanging around this forum for, oh, at least six years now. 
Trust me, you're not the first Java developer brave enough to poke their 
head up :)

Java coders who come here tend to talk about "instance variables". C++ 
coders tend to talk about "members". Haskell people don't tend to talk 
much about objects at all. And PHP coders tend to talk about how they saw 
Spot run.

(I kid. Sorry PHP coders, I couldn't resist.)

It's not about being a moron. Anyone new to a language is going to carry 
across preconceptions from their previous language, and use the 
terminology they're used to. I've seen more than one Lisper assume that 
Python lists are linked lists and wonder how to call car and cdr, and 
nobody is accusing Lispers of being dumb. And I'm not going to even try 
to describe the misconceptions I had learning Python, coming from a 
background of Pascal, RPN and Hypertalk -- the first two languages 
weren't OOP, and Hypertalk's OOP model was *very* different from Python's.

Don't think that every time I mention Java it's a dig at you.


-- 
Steven