Confessions of a Python fanboy

[Masklinn]

On 30 Jul 2009, at 20:06 , Falcolas wrote:
> On Jul 30, 11:56 am, Masklinn <maskl... at masklinn.net> wrote:
>> On 30 Jul 2009, at 19:37 , Jean-Michel Pichavant wrote:
>>
>>> r wrote:
>
>>> How do I know if foo.value is an attribute or if it is a method that
>>> returns the foo value ?
>>
>> It cannot be an attribute. Ruby doesn't give access to attributes,
>> they're always solely private (as in Smalltalk). Also you shouldn't
>> reply to r, he has no idea about what he's talking about.
>
> That doesn't sound like a feature I would appreciate much, though I am
> a big fan of "we're all adults here" programming. Though if they are
> all functions, then adding parentheses wouldn't make much difference,
> so offering the option of getting rid of them makes sense.
>
That's pretty much it.

>>> I would have
>>> trouble saying, just based on the calls above. I would have to go  
>>> back
>>> to the definition or documentation of foo to identify which is doing
>>> what. On the other hand, the following gives a better clue as to  
>>> what
>>> is happening (granted not perfect, but better):
>
>> Well... it doesn't give much of a clue no really.
>
> It, with few exceptions, tells me that fetching the value foo.val will
> not modify the state of foo. Important stuff, at least to me.
But because of those few exceptions, it really tells you that foo.val  
*probably* doesn't modify the state of foo. Unless you go source- 
diving, you can't know for sure. Only Haskell gives you that kind of  
guarantees (and even then, the code you call could have an unsafe*  
somewhere)