[Python-ideas] Why is design-by-contracts not widely adopted?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Barry Scott writes:

 > > @requires(lambda self, a, o: self.sum == o.sum - a.amount)
 > > def withdraw(amount: int) -> None:
 > >     ...
 > > 
 > > There is this lambda keyword in front, but it's not too bad?
 > 
 > The lambda smells of internals that I should not have to care about
 > being exposed.
 > So -1 on lambda being required.

If you want to get rid of the lambda you can use strings and then
'eval' them in the condition.  Adds overhead.

If you want to avoid the extra runtime overhead of parsing
expressions, it might be nice to prototype with MacroPy.  This should
also allow eliminating the lambda by folding it into the macro (I
haven't used MacroPy but it got really good reviews by fans of that
kind of thing).  It would be possible to avoid decorator syntax if you
want to with this implementation.

I'm not sure that DbC is enough of a fit for Python that it's worth
changing syntax to enable nice syntax natively, but detailed reports
on a whole library (as long as it's not tiny) using DbC with a nice
syntax (MacroPy would be cleaner, but I think it would be easy to "see
through" the quoted conditions in an eval-based implementation) would
go a long way to making me sit up and take notice.  (I'm not
influential enough to care about, but I suspect some committers would
be impressed too.  YMMV)

Steve