Perhaps I'm deluded but I don't think so. I'll tell you my situation and I'd appreciate your take on it...
I'm looking into the design a network simulator. The simulator has a few requirements: (1) I need to be able to swap in a variety of replacement components during different simulations. I.e., RadioFrequencyChannelModel, WiredNetworkChannelModel, etc. This drives me to want the notion of inherited interfaces, partly as a form of documentation. (2) I want a form of encapsulation (which I realize isn't necessarily guaranteed in all possible static typing implementations). I.e., I want to ensure that any code which accesses a ChannelModel only calls those methods that are part of the ChannelModel interface. If there's a method RadioFrequencyChannelModel.setBroadcastDistance(...), which isn't part of the generic ChannelModel interface, I don't want most of my code to be able to start using that particular method, if the code need to be able to work with all possible ChannelModel implementations. (3) I like Interfaces as a matter of documentation. It helps me to thing things through. I've got a lot of components that must support interchangeable implementations: channels, modems, MAC layers, link layers, etc. If I have an abstract MAC_layer interface, it helps me think carefully about what every MAC layer ought to provide, and it also helps me explain to other people what a MAC layer in my simulator must provide. That is, it helps me better explain to other people how the system's major components relate to each other. Now, I could use Java or C# to get functionality such as interfaces, but I loath giving up the general productive goodness of Python. That's why I'm looking for something like interfaces. But even if we disagree about the wisdom of my intentions, do you know if/when Guido's planning to work that stuff into Python? The last post I noticed from him on the topic was from 2005. At least back then he sounded pretty into it. Thanks, Christian Bruno Desthuilliers wrote: > Christian Convey a écrit : >> Hi guys, >> >> I'm looking at developing a somewhat complex system, and I think some >> static typing will help me keep limit my confusion. > > Then I think you're suffering from an alas too common delusion. Static > typing (at least declarative static typing) will only makes your system > more complex. But if you want some help in managing complexity, you may > want to look at interfaces systems (Zope3 interfaces or Peak's Protocol) > and multidispatch (Peak's Protocol dispatch package). > -- Christian Convey Computer Scientist, Naval Undersea Warfare Centers Newport, RI (401) 832-6824 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
