typetesting, adaptation, typeclasses, ... (was Re: isinstance() considered harmful)

[Jason Orendorff]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> Jason Orendorff wrote:
> > I'd guess that for the ordinary programmer, append() feels
> > more primitive (perhaps because it deals with atoms and not
> > molecules; and perhaps because it's used more often).
> 
> Refusing to guess in presence of ambiguity is one of Python's
> tenets, though.

It's the language that doesn't guess.  The language designer
is notorious for picking one thing, seemingly arbitrarily,
from a number of reasonable alternatives.

> Since those abstract base classes, in Java, cannot be
> mixin-inherited from, I disagree that they're more useful
> than what Python has.

Point taken.

## Jason Orendorff    http://www.jorendorff.com/