[Python-Dev] Re: Capabilities - published interfaces (original) (raw)

Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl at lkcl.net
Sat Dec 20 09:39:10 EST 2003

On Sat, Dec 20, 2003 at 09:08:43AM -0500, Aahz wrote:

On Sat, Dec 20, 2003, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > > one of the things that is strangely lacking in python is the ability > to restrict access to python objects, a la public, protected and > private from c++. > > perl users find this to be utterly incomprehensible and reprehensible, > especially the bits where conventions are obeyed - and followed! - > about putting underscores in front of function names. > > from a restricted execution perspective, this is not really okay.

Yup. That really is the fundamental issue. Python has been deliberately designed to let programmers do whatever they want; it's a "let the grownups play" perspective.

as python moves into a more mainstream acceptance, it becomes more of an issue to let the kiddies bash themselves with rubber hammers.

[i mention this because a few years ago, a six year old bashed his dad over the head with a hammer after watching tom and jerry beat the stuffing out of each other on telly.]

Python's design. Another major reason is because restricted execution from within Python can never completely solve the problem unless we devote vast amounts of effort. Consider the following two snippets of code:

100 ** 100 ** 100 [None] * (10 ** 10) The first chews up CPU; the second chews up memory.

i infer from these two observations that some of the requirements of restricted execution could be to conserve CPU and memory?

l.

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