Python from Wise Guy's Viewpoint

[mike420 at ziplip.com]

Joachim Durchholz wrote:

> Oh, you're trolling for an inter-language flame fest...

I'm stimulating a productive discussion / polemic. That's what they try
to do in classrooms, for example. If you want to engage in a flame-fest,
do not blame anyone but yourself. Also read my post "Cross-posting is good"
regarding this.

>> 3. no multimethods (why? Guido did not know Lisp, so he did not know
>>    about them) You now have to suffer from visitor patterns, etc. like
>>     lowly Java monkeys.
> 
> Multimethods suck.
> 
> The longer answer: Multimethods have modularity issues (if whatever
> domain they're dispatching on can be extended by independent developers:
> different developers may extend the dispatch domain of a function in
> different directions, and leave undefined combinations; standard
> dispatch strategies as I've seen in some Lisps just cover up the
> undefined behaviour, with a slightly less than 50% chance of being
> correct).

To me this is like saying "uni-methods are bad because they can be 
called on objects that do not have them" or "functions are bad because
they can be given an argument they do not expect". If you disagree and
think that multimethods are a BIGGER problem than uni-methods, please
provide a specific example (in CLOS)