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Maintainability (was Re: Stackless & String-processing)

Ivan Van Laningham ivanlan at callware.com
Thu Jul 22 12:31:20 EDT 1999 
Hi All--

Aahz Maruch wrote:
> 
> 
> I'm afraid I can't agree that there's *ever* a good time to use "from
> foo import *" in a multi-programmer environment.  Too often, you have a
> programmer new to a particular chunk of code trying to debug it; not
> knowing exactly where a method/function call is coming from vastly
> increases debugging time (particularly when there are hundreds of
> modules and scripts).  If you want to use an unadorned class/function,
> you can just take the trouble to explicitly list it as "from foo import
> bar, baz".
> 

All true, except for perhaps Tkinter.  And my soon-to-be-released
mayalib-1.2.  Both are specifically designed to use 'from xxx import *'
and both carefully refrain from polluting your namespace.  But possibly
you don't use Tkinter in your projects, Aahz?  (I think I can safely
assume you don't use any Mayan dates. ...;-)

> My point was related to Tim's in that we're both talking about how
> Python's strait-jacket approach is a Good Thing; I'm simply using an
> example where I think Python could actually be tightened.
> 

I think it's exactly as tight as it needs to be.  If it were tighter,
people would spend more time and energy finding ways around the
restrictions, and it wouldn't be so attractive--and fun.

<houdini-died-in-a-straight-jacket>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
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Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
ivanlan at callware.com
ivanlan at home.com
http://www.pauahtun.org
See also: 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
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