On Monday, May 30, 2016 at 5:04:27 AM UTC+5:30, Gregory Ewing wrote: > Alan Evangelista wrote: > > > if the interest is learning OOP concepts (and not OOP in Python), IMHO > > Java is better. > > The problem with this is that if you're not careful you'll > end up learning a lot of cruft that is irrelevant to Python. > There's no clear distinction in Java between things that > are essential to OO and things that are only there to > support its rigid statically-typed view of the world. > > > - Java forces everything to be implemented in OO model (classes) > > Actually, it doesn't do that any more than Python does. > Static methods are really stand-alone functions; they just > happen to live in the namespace of a class. In other words, > all Java does in this area is confuse things by conflating > modules with classes. > > > - Java widely uses interfaces and abstract classes. Python has not the > > concept of interface, as it favors EAFP > > and duck typing instead of creating base classes which establish > > contracts. > > And this is one of the important things to understand if > you want to write Python programs, rather than Java programs > encoded in Python. > > > Python also allows multiple inheritance, > > which is *usually* a bad idea, unless the base classes are interfaces. > > Actually the best use of multiple inheritance in Python is > to factor out *functionality*, more or less the opposite > of what Java allows. In fact, that goes for inheritance of > any kind; you only need it if you want to share functionality > from the base class. This is very different from Java, > where considerations of static interface checking dominate > everything. > > > - In Java, interface/implementation separation is *usually* a bigger > > concern (eg getters and setters > > are common in Java code, rare in Python code) . > > That's because you don't *need* them in Python, since you > can always turn an attribute into a property at any time > without affecting calling code. You can't do that in Java, > which is the only reason you see so many getters and setters. > If you think you might ever need them, you have to start > out with them from the beginning. > > So in summary, I wouldn't recommend learning Java as a > precursor to learning Python OO. You'll just confuse yourself > and pick up a lot of bad habits that you'll have to unlearn > later. > > -- > Greg
Thanks, Greg. To everyone involved in this Java tangent: thankfully I have some taste of object-oriented programming in Java. Personally, I much prefer Python's dynamic approach, although sometimes it's a pain to find that all the patterns "wisdom" you collected is useless. :D ~~Ankush -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
