[Python-Dev] PEP 246, redux (original) (raw)

Michel Pelletier michel at dialnetwork.com
Tue Jan 11 01:16:04 CET 2005

On Monday 10 January 2005 09:58 am, python-dev-request at python.org wrote:

Message: 3 Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 07:46:39 -0800 From: Guido van Rossum <gvanrossum at gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] PEP 246, redux To: Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> Cc: "Clark C.Evans" <cce at clarkevans.com>, Python Dev <python-dev at python.org> Message-ID: <ca471dc2050110074614f5edc3 at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

> I had been promising to rewrite PEP 246 to incorporate the last several > years' worth of discussions &c about it, and Guido's recent "stop the > flames" artima blog post finally pushed me to complete the work. > Feedback is of course welcome, so I thought I had better repost it > here, rather than relying on would-be commenters to get it from CVS... Thanks for doing this, Alex! I yet have to read the whole thing [will attempt do so later today] but the few snippets I caught make me feel this is a big step forward.

Me too! I didn't realize it the first time 246 came around how important adaptation was and how interfaces just aren't as useful without it.

I'm wondering if someone could do a similar thing for PEP 245, interfaces syntax? Alex hinted that it's a couple of rounds behind the developments in Zope and Twisted.

Nothing implements 245, which is just about the syntax, I intended to write another PEP describing an implementation, at the time Jim's original straw-man; which I'm glad I didn't do as it would have been a waste of time.
Had I written that document, then it would be a copule of rounds behind Zope and Twisted. But as it stands now nothing need be based on 245.

I'm personally not keen on needing two new keywords (interface and implements) so I hope that whoever does the rewrite could add a section on the advantages and disadvantages of the 'implements' keyword (my simplistic alternative proposal is to simply include interfaces in the list of bases in the class statement; the metaclass can then sort it out).

I like implements, but any spelling works for me. "implements" strikes me as an elegant counterpart to "interface" and risks minimal breakage. Can we still import and say "implements()" for b/w compatibility and for those of us who do want an explicit statement like that?

-Michel

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