Confessions of a Python fanboy

[zipher]

> > 3.) true OOP
> > Now before you go and get all "huffy" over this statement, hear me
> > out. Python is the best language in the world. But it damn sure has
> > some warts! "len(this)" instead of "obj.length" max(that) instead of
> > [1,2,3,4,5].max().
> 
> As the Zen says: '[P]racticality beats purity'. Personally, I'm not
> sure how a handful of convenient built-in functions make a language in
> which _everything is an object_ somehow "false" OO.
> 
> If you're really that concerned with writing "true" OO (for some
> wildly variable value of "true"), there's nothing stopping you from
> doing so now:
> 
>     obj.__len__()

The issue is that Python currently blurs a very powerful conceptual boundary in CS -- between the abstract space where objects and variables are held and the concrete underlying machine. 

By having methods like len() in your built-in namespace when it's really only relevant to objects that are types of containers, you blur one primary component of OOP:  encapsulation.

Mark