[Python-ideas] The Descriptor Protocol...

[Martin Chilvers]

G'day,

On 02/03/2011 19:33, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 10:25 AM, Martin Chilvers
> <martin.chilvers at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> G'day,
>>
>> On 02/03/2011 17:59, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>>
>>> It never occurred to me to think of the descriptor protocol the way
>>> you do, and it never even occurred to me to that the key would ever be
>>> needed. You can invoke principles of information flow until you're
>>> blue in the face, but IMO it is totally reasonable to drop information
>>> that has been used already as a request passes through layers of
>>> abstraction.
>>
>> True, but in this case the 'droppage' ;^) is at the first layer of
>> abstraction and the first hook point...
>>
>>> FWIW, rhetorical questions like "why doesn't Python do X"
>>> are usually a poor way to start a discussion about a feature request.
>>
>> Which is why my original post started with:-
>>
>> "Please excuse me if I have missed something obvious, but I have a question
>> about the implementation of the descriptor protocol, and more specifically
>> about the arguments passed to the '__get__' and '__set__' methods."
>>
>> and finished with:-
>>
>> "Again, apologies if I've missed the obvious"
>>
>> Which, I don't think, is confrontational in any way, and simply asked what I
>> firmly believe is a legitimate question about the API.
>
> Which has been answered, and yet you don't appear happy with the answer. :-)

The answer was just fine and I quite honestly only raised the issue in 
the spirit of the "continuous improvement" of the APIs.

Martin