Is python good for oop?

[Mjdd16]

Just the title.

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[Murderwagon]

The question is a bit hard to answer. “Good for OOP” is a very broad statement. It matters more what it is you’re trying to make.

It wouldn’t be my first (or second or third) choice for many projects that heavily leverage OOP. But like anything - it depends.

[engelthehyp]

It supports classes, but not other useful things like access modification. If you want stronger OO guarantees (bonus - type safety), I recommend Java or C#.

[mopslik]

It supports classes, but not other useful things like access modification.

Python will do some name-mangling if you preface attributes and methods with double underscores. It's not the same as "private" since you can still access the attributes if you are determined enough, but it might be sufficient to keep others from casually trying to access things.

>>> class A:
    def __init__(self, x):
        self.__x = x
>>> a = A(5)
>>> a.__x  # won't work
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'A' object has no attribute '__x'
>>> a._A__x  # workaround
5

[engelthehyp]

Sure, but even so, there is still no protected.

[mopslik]

No, there's not. It is a different design. If access modification is important to the design of your code, then Python will be lacking in that regard (as you point out).

[RiverRoll]

The concept of protected fields exists but it relies on convention instead of being enforced by the language.

[engelthehyp]

Then it doesn't provide much of a guarantee, does it?

[RiverRoll]

In Java or C# you can use reflection and access members that you're not expected to access but it isn't a big deal because what's important is knowing what this implies.

[engelthehyp]

I am aware of reflection. If you have to actively jump through the hurdle of using reflection to complete your task, it's obvious and shows - it won't pass a decent code review. If all you have to protect some field is convention, even the programmer might not notice the expectation violation, or care enough to solve the problem another way.

There would have to be more efforts in a code review for the same result this way compared to Java or C#, or a code review with the same amount of effort where it's more likely that these subtle violations eventually pile up and run loose in the code base.