Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ... > There are plenty of reasons for preferring new style classes. If those > reasons hold for you, then of course you should use new style classes. > > But that's not the same thing as saying that you should use new style > classes *even when you don't care about those features*.
You should always use new-style classes in order to avoid having to stop and make a decision each time you code a class -- having to stop and ask yourself "do I need any of the many extra features of new-style classes here, or will legacy classes suffice?" each and every time. There should ideally be only one obvious way -- and that obvious way is to always use new-style classes and avoid a feature that's there only for backwards compatibility with legacy code. It's a specific case of the general rule "adopt good habits as routines"; I recommend Limoncelli's excellent treatment of that subject in his "Time Management for System Administrators" book. By not having to ask yourself "do I really need to do X" each and every time, but making it an absolute and invariant habit to always do it, as long as X is a good habit (will be useful some of the time and not damaging the rest of the time), you save yourself time-waste, aggravation, and useless expenditure of attention and mental energy. > What I predict is that under the hood, Python 3 will complete the job of > unifying types and classes. The distinction between classic classes and > new style classes will go away. All classes will behave the same, whether > you write "class X:" or "class X():" or "class X(object):" or whatever > syntax Python 3 uses for defining classes. Sure -- all the semantical peculiarity of legacy classes will disappear (and won't be missed). But meanwhile, no reason not to adopt good habits. Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
