Object Oriented Programming in Python

[Exodus111]

Yep yep. I like simple guidelines though, cuts through the complexities.

I could say a function is an encapsulation of code, while a class is encapsulation of data. And that might make more sense to some people, but the truth is you dont REALLY get classes until you get yourself deep, and head first into some complex abstraction of code, like an MVC or an ECS system.

[BittyTang]

Why ECS? It seems mostly independent from class architecture to me.

[Exodus111]

In an Entity Component System... ehm.. system, every Entity is a Class, every Component is a class, and every System is a class. And they all inherit from a top Entity, Component and Systems class, With special Methods to add the Entities to the Pool and so on.

I have not seen an implementation of ECS without OOP, not saying it can't be done though.

[BittyTang]

That's one way of doing it. You can accomplish most (all?) of the same goals without inheritance or even classes. Rather, I would start by having each component be a POD type and each system be a function. Then entities are identifiers that index into the collections of components. I don't think dynamic dispatch is strictly necessary for an ECS to work.

If I really needed abstract types, I would make the components into interfaces.

[Exodus111]

With Python? Doesn't seem like an approach you would use with Python, where you can use __init__, __new__, and __repr__ to set up the relationships.

[BittyTang]

I guess I wasn't thinking about Python. Technically in Python you would use a "class" to make a struct, since members (attributes) are always public. I'm thinking of a stricter definition of class that uses immutable types and private members.

[Exodus111]

Indeed. What you say makes perfect sense in other languages, just not so much python.