[Python-ideas] Factory functions (was: RE: time.wallclock() or other similar stuff)

Kristján Valur Jónsson kristjan at ccpgames.com
Wed Nov 3 12:14:56 CET 2010


What is a class but a factory function?
As you explain it, providing a factory function is merely a fancy way of saying: "Look, don't subclass this class, since we might change it."
Wouldn't it be better to be explicit about it?
But even builtin classes are subclassable now, and people rely in internal features of all LIB classes at their peril, so I can't see that this matters.

Cheers,
Kristjan

-----Original Message-----
From: python-ideas-bounces+kristjan=ccpgames.com at python.org [mailto:python-ideas-bounces+kristjan=ccpgames.com at python.org] On Behalf Of M.-A. Lemburg
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2010 17:14
To: python-ideas at python.org
Subject: Re: [Python-ideas] Factory functions (was: RE: time.wallclock() or other similar stuff)

Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 13:26:27 +0800
> Kristján Valur Jónsson
> <kristjan at ccpgames.com> wrote:
>> And why are there factory functions in threading.py and not classes?
> 
> I'm not sure, but it looks like a poor man's way of discouraging 
> subclassing.

You usually use factory functions if you only define an API that can then be implemented in many ways.

With a class hierarchy you are always bound to one implementation and moving from Python to C or providing different specifically optimized implementations can become cumbersome.




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