Class Variable Question

[Douglas Alan]

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:

> That's correct. Python gives you "enough rope to shoot yourself in
> the foot", and so does not offer the protection schemes associated
> with statically-types languages like Java and C++. This increases
> the flexibility of the language, at the (slight) risk of errors
> which would not occur in Java or C++.

Actually, there's no extra flexibility than if you used different
syntaxes for variable initialization and variable assignment.

> There is magic you can do to restrict operations of this kind, but most
> Python programmers are happy to accept the language as it is, since in
> practise this doesn't appear to be a problem.

In practice it is a *very* significant problem.  This is certainly one
of the largest sources of bugs.  And it is, annoyingly enough, one of
the few valid complaints that Perl devotees can make against Python.

> Look at it this way: you can spend the 60% time saving you will make
> by programming in Python to make sure you have not made such errors!

Why not be honest:  It's a wart on the language.  But no language is
perfect and Python is far better than most.

|>oug