[Python-Dev] Things to Know About Super

[Michele Simionato]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 8:33 PM, Casey Duncan <casey at pandora.com> wrote:
> - There are good alternatives to multiple inheritance for many cases, but
> there are cases where multiple inheritance is arguably best.

Maybe, but I am still biased in the opposite direction ;)

>Traits are a
> possible alternative that deserve further study. I think that study would be
> greatly aided by a 3rd-party library implementing traits for Python. If
> traits are to gain any traction or ever be considered for inclusion into the
> language such a library would need to exist first and demonstrate its
> utility.

I wrote a trait library which I plan to release soon or later. However
it is intended as a proof of concept, not as a candidate for inclusion
in the standard library. As of now, I don't think we should have
a different way of doing mixins in the standard library. There should
be only one obvious way and the obvious way in current Python
is multiple inheritance as it is now. The proof of concept is
important for educational purposes, to open the mind to
alternatives, to give inspiration to the creators of new languages:
it is not intended to add complication (whenever small) to
current Python. Having said that, maybe once I release the
library people will start using it in production and will ask
for inclusion for the standard library, but this is not my goal
now. This happened for my decorator module years ago:
when I wrote it I did not expect people to use it,  I saw it
as a temporary hack until we got a better support for
fiddling with function signatures in the standard library.
Nevertheless now a lot of people are using it and I am
not even sure it is a good thing (I have seen many decorator
abuses out there). This the strange thing that happens when
you release a library: you will never now what people will
end up using it for ;)

      Michele Simionato