On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 9:57 AM Irv Kalb <i...@furrypants.com> wrote:
> I am doing some writing (for an upcoming book on OOP), and I'm a little > stuck. > > I understand what a "property" is, how it is used and the benefits, but > apparently my explanation hasn't made the light bulb go on for my editor. > The editor is asking for a definition of property. I've looked at many > articles on line and a number of books, and I haven't found an appropriate > one yet. > > I have written some good examples of how it works, but I agree that a > definition up front would be helpful. I have tried a number of times, but > my attempts to define it have not been clear. Perhaps the best I've found > so far is from the Python documentation: > > A property object has getter, setter, and deleter methods usable as > decorators that create a copy of the property with the corresponding > accessor function set to the decorated function. > > But I'm hoping that someone here can give me a more concise (one or two > sentence) definition of the word "property". > > (I would like to avoid going through the whole derivation with the > property function, as that would distract from the points that I am trying > to make.) > > Thanks in advance, > I tend to think of properties as dynamic attributes. And I'm not their biggest fan. I don't like having a look where a class and its parent classes are defined to tell if something that looks like an attribute, really is an attribute. I understand that exposing an attribute as part of a public API is faster, and the ability to make them dynamic later keeps you from painting yourself in a corner, but I'd rather just slow down computation a little than end up with a little greater maintenance burden. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
