[Edu-sig] re: Terminology question: just operator overriding?

[Arthur]

Kirby writes -

> Agreed.  It's one thing to be a useful paradigm, another thing to claim
> to be THE paradigm.  No need to get too doctrinaire.

In fairness to Python, perhaps you should at least give some play to its
multi-paradigm approach.  Just so people don't confuse it with being
religiously OO, as for example, Ruby or Smalltalk seem to be.  Talking
through my hat, BTW, if it isn't clear - that is, considering the depth of
my undersanding of these issues and my experience with Smalltalk and Ruby.

The fact is that since Python is my major language, the distinction between
programming paradigms is not a very useful paradigm with which to concern
onceself.  The best way to get from Point A to Point B, via Python's
facilities, is the more useful question.  What paradigm borders I cross in
the process is not something with which I concern myself (or truly
understand). If I had more trouble finding my way from A to B - in a way
that someone following after me would have difficulty following - I would
then concern myself more with why that might be. And think more, perhaps,
about programming paradigms. At the level at which I am working, at least, I
don't see the issue arising.

My prejudice toward using OOP  concepts was probably just a function of the
fact that it was a natural fit for much of what I was doing and how I was
thinking about what I was doing.

Parathentically, the difficulty with OOP is spoken about, in things I have
stumbled across, as a Circle and Ellipse problem (I think I have this
right). Being a form of the Chicken and Egg problem.

Interestingly, to me, thinking in terms of Projective Geoemetry, the issue
evaporates.  Since they the Circle and Ellipse are projectively equivalent.
And one would not expect to be able to derive one from the other. They are
the same thing, different spelling.

Art