[Tutor] Class Inheritance

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:22:54 am David Hutto wrote:
> I'm new, I touched the Holy lib, and
> didn't check to reset the original Tkinter directory before posting.
> Won't happen again.

I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot, you caught me at a time when I 
was frustrated about other things, and after spending 30 minutes 
wasting my time trying to reproduce the errors you were getting, I 
snapped at you.

It's nothing about the library being "Holy", that's an asinine thing to 
say. It's a software package, not a piece of the One True Cross. But 
you wouldn't randomly plug and unplug parts in your car engine, and 
then complain that "Perhaps I've misunderstood something, but it seems 
to me that the Ford Fiesta doesn't have a working internal combustion 
engine."

You've got the right idea about learning by experimentation, but there's 
a right way and a wrong way to do it, and the way you've chosen is 
actively harmful to *you*, as well as wasting the time of those who 
volunteer to give help. How many hours did you waste because you 
thought that Python's implementation of inheritance was buggy, due to 
changes you introduced?

Even if it were only *one minute*, it would be too long because it is 
completely, 100% unnecessary. Keep the standard library as it is 
supplied. If you want to modify a module to see what happens, make a 
copy of it and put it in your home directory with another name, and 
make the changes there.

I applaud the fact that you are actively trying to solve problems before 
asking for help. I'm not being sarcastic or condescending when I say 
this is fantastic. But I am saying that your practice of *how* you try 
to solve problems yourself is actually counterproductive, making a rod 
for your own back, by introducing bugs into code that wasn't buggy in 
the first place. Learning to code is hard enough when you can trust the 
library to be (mostly) bug free, don't make it any harder!



-- 
Steven D'Aprano