Bruno Desthuilliers wrote: >> I guess as long as your documentation is clear about which attributes >> require computation and which don't... > > Why should it ? FWIW, I mentionned that I would obviously not use > properties for values requiring heavy, non cachable computation. This > set aside, the fact that the attribute is computed (or not) is none of > the concerns of client code. I think you know that concept, it's called > 'encapsulation' !-)
Encapsulation doesn't mean having no understanding of the object you're using. We all use Python lists, knowing that adding to the end is cheap, and adding to the front is expensive. If you're using someone's data type, but you have no idea where the performance costs are, you're just asking for trouble. That's true even if you're not prematurely optimizing -- in the case of lists, doing the wrong sort of insert can make an O(N) algorithm an O(N**2) algorithm. So I don't think this has anything to do with encapsulation. This really only has to do with what you and I think are natural programming intuitions. I agree that Python is not Java, or C, or whatever, but there are a wide variety of precedents in a wide variety of languages (the Python stdlib included) that lead many programmers to expect only minimal computation to be performed when accessing attributes. I believe we simply disagree on whether or not Python programmers need to be trained out of these expectations. STeVe -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
