The Impoliteness of Overriding Methods (2012)

Re:The Impoliteness of Overriding Methods (2012) by victor___ on Sunday April 29, 2018 @02:07PM (#16953138)

It seems like the debate boils down to "should subclasses be able to override behaviour in ways the base class doesn't anticipate?".

Pro: sometimes it lets you extend classes in useful ways that the original author didn't anticipate. Con: it makes it difficult or impossible to reason about invariants in the base class.

Seems like it's a trade-off between hack-ability and robustness.

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Re:The Impoliteness of Overriding Methods (2012) by andybak on Sunday April 29, 2018 @06:04PM (#16954167)

> Seems like it's a trade-off between hack-ability and robustness.

Precisely. This is where Python's "We're all adults, here" philosophy comes into play: just trust me with the footgun. I'll take responsibility for the risk but dammit, if I'm not going to be pissed when I can't do something I know I need to do.

Maybe it's the distinction between "languages for large teams of mediocre programmers" vs "languages for hackers or small experienced teams"

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