[Twisted-Python] Python a post-Object Oriented Language?

[John Benson]

Hi, I saw the above characterization in one of the itamarst.org twisted presentation slides. Although I'm just a journeyman programmer and somewhat unaccustomed to the rarefied atmosphere of many twisted Python discussions, I'm curious to hear why Python would be "post-OOP".

If I recall correctly, my little O'Reilly C++ book said that OOP meant you had 4 things (abstraction, encapsulation, hierarchy and something else that escapes me at the moment, maybe "coolness"). I also recall that compiled C++ had a hard time doing the neat tricks that an interpreted language can do and was necessarily limited by its origin as a preprocessor step in front of a classic C compiler. There were some minor differences like automatic constructor chaining in C++, as opposed to manual __init__ chaining in Python. There were some major differences like being able to dynamically set attributes on an object, and the replacement of data hiding by convention in Python.

Given that background, I'm just curious to hear the grounds on which Python can be classified as post-OOP. Any comments?

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://twistedmatrix.com/pipermail/twisted-python/attachments/20031119/4ae007ee/attachment.htm