help needed with class and method confusion

[Robert Brewer]

EricN wrote:
> Here's one way to do it (undoubtedly there are other ways as well). 
> Sorry, I couldn't loop the moons.  Probably a programmer more clever
> than I could write a factory pattern for it.
> 
> class Moon:
>     def __init__(self, name, diameter = 0.0, planet = "unknown"):
>         self.NAME = name
>         self.DIAMETER = diameter
>         self.HOMEPLANET = planet
> 
>     def setMoonName(self, name):
>         self.NAME = str(name)
> 
>     def getMoonName(self):
>         return self.NAME
> 
>     def setMoonDiameter(self, diam):
>         self.DIAMETER = float(diam)
> 
>     def getMoonDiameter(self):
>         return self.DIAMETER
> 
>     def setMoonHomePlanet(self, planet):
>         self.HOMEPLANET = str(planet)
> 
>     def getMoonHomePlanet(self):
>         return self.HOMEPLANET
> 
> 
> if __name__ == "__main__":
>     moons = []
>     Io = Moon("Io", 1.0, "Jupiter")
>     moons.append(Io)
>     Europa = Moon("Europa", 2.0, "Jupiter")
>     moons.append(Europa)
>     Ganymeade = Moon("Ganymeade", 3.0, "Jupiter")
>     moons.append(Ganymeade)
>     Titan = Moon("Titan", 3.0, "Saturn")
>     moons.append(Titan)
>     
>     for x in range(len(moons)):
>         print moons[x].getMoonName()
>         print moons[x].getMoonDiameter()
>         print moons[x].getMoonHomePlanet()
>         print

Wow. Someone's spent too much time writing Java. You can achieve the
same thing with far less cruft:

class Moon:
    def __init__(self, name, diameter = 0.0, planet = "unknown"):
        self.name = name
        self.diameter = diameter
        self.homeplanet = planet

if __name__ == "__main__":
    moons = [Moon("Io", 1.0, "Jupiter"),
             Moon("Europa", 2.0, "Jupiter"),
             Moon("Ganymeade", 3.0, "Jupiter"),
             Moon("Titan", 3.0, "Saturn"),
             ]
    
    for moon in moons:
        print moon.name
        print moon.diameter
        print moon.homeplanet

The biggest two changes stemming from the questions:
1) Why bother with all the setX/getX junk?

and

2) Why bother with variable names for each moon? Treat them anonymously.


FuManChu