Python and the need for speed

[Paul Rubin]

bartc <bc at freeuk.com> writes:
> I do know that if I want to port some program (be it in Python or
> C++), or simply try and understand it, if I see it's full of class
> definitions or whatever, then I won't bother.

There was a time in the evolution of OOP when inheritance was thought of
as a cool and enabling thing for code re-use, and lots of architecture
astronautics involved designing deeply nested and complex inheritance
hierarchies in programs.  These days I think there's more accepted that
inheritance is confusing and obscures the control flow in programs, that
it was often mis-used, and that while there are still legitimate uses
cases for it, it should be used sparingly.  That helps quite a lot.

C++ templates let you write generics that are often cleaner than using
subclasses, though the design of templates can lead to awful code and
notoriously bloated and useless error messages.  The long-awaited
Concepts extension should help some with that.  Again though, like
anything else, templates work best when used tastefully rather than
willy-nilly.