Confessions of a Python fanboy

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 11:46 AM, zipher <dreamingforward at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > 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.
>

Please take care of your quoting. You just quoted two other posts, and
I have no idea who said things without going and digging in the
archive.

ChrisA