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Maintainability (was Re: Stackless & String-processing)

Skip Montanaro skip at mojam.com
Thu Jul 22 01:10:09 EDT 1999 
>>>>> "Aahz" == Aahz Maruch <aahz at netcom.com> writes:

    Aahz> Tim Peters <tim_one at email.msn.com> wrote:

    >> That's fine for a one-man show.  "Maintainability" in my life cuts
    >> across programmers, and it's Not Good for each person to reinvent
    >> their own basic machinery -- even to have the ability to do so.  One
    >> reason I like Python is that it *doesn't* let the jerk down the hall
    >> invent their own control structures <0.5 wink>.

    Aahz> Yup.  Today I had to lay down the law to our programming team: use of
    Aahz> the construct "from foo import *" is now expressly, explicitly, and
    Aahz> completely forbidden.  "from foo import bar" is deprecated; "from foo
    Aahz> import foo" is acceptable; and "import foo" is strongly preferred.

    Aahz> I'd be in favor of getting "from foo import *" entirely out of the
    Aahz> language, but I suspect it's just too convenient for short hacks.

What Tim said about programmers not inventing control structures is somewhat
different than what Aahz put his foot down about.  There's nothing wrong
with "from foo import *" when it's used in the right context.  Some modules
in the standard distribution were designed specifically to support this
(types and Tkinter come to mind).  Used willy-nilly, you can get into
trouble with it, one-man show or not.

Skip Montanaro	| http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com  | http://www.musi-cal.com/~skip/
847-475-3758
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