Why does python not have a mechanism for data hiding?

[Ville M. Vainio]

Fuzzyman <fuzzyman at gmail.com> writes:


> The 'we told you not to use that' approach, when applied to paying
> customers doesn't really work... all they see is that you broke
> their spreadsheet code by changing your API.

And the customer point of view is quite reasonable - they have a job
to do, and a limited timeframe; sometimes accessing privates directly
is much better than waiting for updates from vendor. Bad designs (as
far as choosing publics goes) happen.

Even if their softare breaks on upgrade, you can quite clearly point
out that they used an internal api - and they will keep on using the
old version until they solve the problem. Everybody wins.

Perhaps a lint-like validation tool would be optimal for this
problem...