object.enable() anti-pattern

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 1:21 AM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <mailman.1532.1368198547.3114.python-list at python.org>,
>  Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Agreed, in generality. But what is actually gained by hiding data from
>> yourself?
>
> You're not hiding it from yourself.  You're hiding it from the other
> people who are using your code and may not understand all the subtle
> gotchas as well as you do.

True. And on looking over my code, I find that there are a few cases
where I've used private members: I have a buffer class that acts
pretty much like a non-refcounted string, and it declares a private
copy constructor to prevent accidental misuse. But it's the exception,
not the rule. My main point isn't about the cases where you actually
want to prevent access, but the all-too-common case where the member
itself is private and there are two public methods to get and set it.
Massive boilerplate. Completely unnecessary in 99%+ of cases.

ChrisA