[Python-ideas] Mitigating 'self.' Method Pollution

[Mark Lawrence]

On 11/07/2015 08:25, Michael Hewitt wrote:
> Let's compare two versions of a method taken from some code that my 11
> year old son wrote yesterday:
>
> *_Current_*
>
>     global height
>     def keep_moving_gravity(self):
>          self.y += self.gravity
>          self.y = max(self.y, 0)
>          self.y = min(self.y, height - 1)
>
>
> *_Proposed_*
>
>     global height
>     def keep_moving_gravity(self):
>          self y, gravity
>          y += gravity
>          y = max(y, 0)
>          y = min(y, height - 1)
>
>
> Is anyone actually going to argue that the first version is cleaner and
> more readable than the second?

Yes, as I already have.

>
> As far as maintainability, the author of the first version must
> repeatedly make the same decisions over and over regarding how to scope
> each variable reference as he/she types 'y', 'gravity', and 'height'.
> The author of the second code makes these decisions exactly once at the
> top of the method and then is free to refer to each variable naturally
> without the mental overhead of prefixing each 'y' and 'gravity' with
> 'self.', but God forbid - not 'height'.  I can tell you that the mental
> overhead of this is taxing my son & is the cause of many painful
> mistakes -- just forgetting a single 'self.' prefix on one of the above
> field references can waste a significant amount of time.
>

Wrong, as Ben Finney has already pointed out.  You'll also have to wade 
up and down any large methods to ensure that you distinguish local 
variables from instance variables.  Frankly I see nothing in this 
proposal at all, so I'm moving from -1 to the -1000 somebody else gave 
it in the early hours of the mornig, I'm sorry but I forget who that was.

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence