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

Guido van Rossum gvanrossum at gmail.com
Wed Jan 12 16:26:36 CET 2005

[Alex]

I'm saying that if, by mistake, the programmer has NOT registered the A->C adapter (which would be easily coded and work perfectly), then thanks to transitivity, instead of a clear and simple error message leading to immediate diagnosis of the error, they'll get a subtle unnecessary degradation of information and resulting reduction in information quality.

I understand, but I would think that there are just as many examples of cases where having to register a trivial A->C adapter is much more of a pain than it's worth; especially if there are a number of A->B pairs and a number of B->C pairs, the number of additional A->C pairs needed could be bewildering.

But I would like to see some input from people with C++ experience. C++ goes to great lengths to pick automatic conversions (which perhaps aren't quite the same as adaptations but close enough for this comparison to work) and combine them. In practice, is this a benefit or a liability?

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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