Sept. 5, 2002
12:32 a.m.
This is a spur-of-the-moment thought, so it might not be a reasonable comment, but do we care that all of these methods will show up in when using dir() or any other introspective check? While I think the idea is great, it might give this sense that they are really, truly implemented for the class instead of reliant on the other implementations; the side effects of changing one of the required methods might have unexpected consequences for the user.
dir() *intends* to show methods regardless of whether they are implemented in the class or in a base class. So this doesn't sound like a valid objection. Pydoc shows inherited methods separately. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)