[Python-Dev] Confirming status of new modules in 3.4 (original) (raw)

Nikolaus Rath Nikolaus at rath.org
Sun Mar 16 19:24:34 CET 2014

Charles-François Natali <cf.natali at gmail.com> writes:

2014-03-15 21:44 GMT+00:00 Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus at rath.org>:

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes: > This downside of using subclassing as an API should be well known by now > and widely warned against.

It wasn't known to me until now. Are these downsides described in some more detail somewhere? The short version is: "inheritance breaks encapsulation". As a trivial and stupid example, let's say you need a list object which counts the number of items inserted/removed (it's completely stupid, but that's not the point :-): So you might do something like: [...]

Very illuminating example, thanks a lot!

Best, -Nikolaus

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