Fair Warning: This is all conjecture and idiocy… possible more the latter than the former. With that in mind, this is more of a flow of thought than any kind of organized scientific paper… thing.
NOTE: When I use the word “attribute” I really mean things like properties, fields, methods, ect on a class. Since I am guessing most people reading this come from a C# or Java background, the word “attribute” might be confused with something else. So remember attribute = property/method/field/anything that defines an object.
So as I delve farther and farther into the insanity that is Python, I can feel my mind screaming. Not like “Oh f— I’m being eaten alive” kind of screaming, more like “Don’t open that door! You know the guy with the axe is behind it!” Of course, like any good horror movie character I’m too dumb to know better. So delve I do.
Now I’m what you could consider a classically trained programmer and by that I mean I never programmed before college so I didn’t do much exploration. You know, a Microsoft programmer. With that, I’ve had the ideas of interfaces and class hierarchies complete hammered into my head, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that I’ve tried my best to make Python into c#. After all, that’s what I should be doing. I don’t know any better. DONT JUDGE ME!
It wasn’t until the other day when it just hit me. And I don’t mean slight hit, I mean like I just told Miguel Cabrera I’ve seen better players in Little League. It occurred to me that it’s possible, just possible I might have to change my way of thinking because of one major design difference: dynamic attributes… actually f— it, dynamic everything, but let’s just stick with something simple. In Python something like this:
someObject = dynamicObject() someObject.propertyImJustAddingForTheHellOfIt = 1
Where dynamicObject is nothing but a cheesy class that inherits Object but has nothing on it. (Turns out that if I did someObject = Object() I couldn’t do this since Object by default doesn’t contain the ability to add things dynamically… and this was by design.) So what does this mean? Well it means that anything at anytime could have any attribute. You might be asking why this is such a big deal. Annnnnnd that’s why I’m typing this out so stop asking questions until the end, k?
If any object can have anything on it at anytime, it could be said that types and classes kind of go out the window. Why? Because when it all gets washed away, what really does the work in a program? Methods. Now with C# there is a much stronger enforcement of typing so a method KNOWS that whatever coming in has to be a certain type. This is where object inheritance and interface implementation come in. Because there is such a prerequisite for typing in C#, you have to develop around the object itself and have the methods conform to them. In Python, I question whether this approach is really warranted since with dynamic attributes what really matters is what the method needs. It could be argued in the world of dynamic, the methods actually dictate everything. Since types are basically thrown out the window, what’s the point? Why not just shift all development around methods and their results? It’s kind of an inverse way of looking at things when used to the C# way of doing them.
Method Oriented Programming?
This is something I’m kicking around a bit, but why not base the architecture around methods rather than classes? It would give a much truer sense to the word “Factory”. Instead of worrying about having a class hierarchy, have methods responsible for creating objects on the fly, piecing them together with other methods and such. I would think this could give a program a massive ability to adapt quickly to any given situation if you can add and subtract from objects on the fly since you are not longer concerned with types, just attributes. Does the thing coming in have X attribute? Yes? Great do something. No? Fine don’t do something. (Python has a built in way to check if an object has a certain property) Does it need it to continue? Well call a method to add it to the object. Has the use for it expired? Well just remove it. Taken to an extreme, I could see this being used to construct more self sustainable programs, ones that can makes choices on their own to produce novel outcomes. (Sadly, used like viruses and hacking security systems come to mind, but there has to be more noble uses for this) Sounds like a lot of freedom.
Now I’m not saying you can completely get away from class structure… at least I haven’t gone far enough into this concept to see if it’s possible. However, it should be obvious that it at least allows for a completely different way of thinking that may help solve problems that were seemingly impossible to solve using more rigid languages like C#. Of course, it also lends itself to shooting yourself in the foot. Most likely, this approach would need more overall care since you don’t have things like type safety to cover your a–.
Anyways, this is just preliminary rambling of a child (programmatically speaking… and maturity wise) who is just kicking around ideas that weren’t really there before.
An odd side note, python gives a new… or maybe the correct… meaning to the word “constructor” since because of that highly dynamic nature it’s not unlikely to see something like this:
__int__(self):
self.someNewField = "This property now exists"
self.someNewMethod = someFile.someMethod
Which is actually more like a factory then how say c# uses constructors, which more the most part is like a initialization. The other interesting thing to note is how python treats files and methods. If you declare a method on a file, you can actually import that method as if it were an object itself. This makes the above code even easier to accomplish since you can have a file of just methods that you can “import” and add to an object.