[Python-Dev] Things to Know About Super (original) (raw)

Michele Simionato michele.simionato at gmail.com
Wed Aug 27 05:48:06 CEST 2008

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 6:13 PM, Michele Simionato <michele.simionato at gmail.com> wrote:

I not completely against multiple inheritance. I am against multiple inheritance as it is now. A restricted form of multiple inheritance in which mixins classes are guaranteed to be orthogonal would be fine with me (provided it is not abused). This concept exists already in other languages, the orthogonal mixins are called "traits".

I must correct myself here. Even if for practical purposes traits look like a restricted multiple inheritance, in principle it is better to think of them as of an enhanced single inheritance. With traits there is always a single superclass: traits are just single inheritance with a nice syntax to include methods (like in Ruby) and a guarantee that methods will not be overridden silently (this one is missing in Ruby).

M.S.

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