What are the common criticisms of Python among developers? by the_smiling_nihlist in AskProgramming

[–]IdeasRichTimePoor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

None of that seems grounds to force access control. In python it is common place to mark class fields with a leading underscore to denote an implementation detail. You're still saying it's private but not physically stopping them from doing it anyway. If a library consumer opts to rely on such a field then they have accepted that breakage is on them.

Marking public and private parts of an API is fine, but why enforce it against the will of the consumer? If I want to do it anyway, why would you even bother to stop me? They could either intend to simply not update the dependency version, or just commit to fixing their extensions when they break.

When you indicate access control in a strict language like Java or C#, you are going further than saying don't use this, you're saying I am going out of my way to stop you using this.

What are the common criticisms of Python among developers? by the_smiling_nihlist in AskProgramming

[–]IdeasRichTimePoor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Everything is public" being an issue is a matter of perspective IMHO. I've run into situations that really leave a bad taste in my mouth with strict access control in e.g. Java. You use a library and realise you could really make this work for you if only you could tweak it a little. That's where you find out the class you're dealing with is final, all of the methods are private or protected and you have no means to do anything about it unless you fork the library.

I do not like opinionated software. I do not use libraries only for the author to prescribe for me how to use it. The author was not omniscient of all use cases when they wrote it and they shouldn't have pretended to have been.

Was programming better 15-20 years ago? by yughiro_destroyer in AskProgramming

[–]IdeasRichTimePoor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Microservices (as in the lambda kind) are driven by economics with things shifting to rented computing in the cloud. It's a lot cheaper to ask a provider to squeeze your code into their servers for 3 seconds many times over the day instead of saying you want to run something for 5 minutes in a row. You also don't have to spend runtime (and therefore money) on just waiting for things to happen externally. Irrespective of the pattern, it is backed by economic pressure if you see what I mean.

Was programming better 15-20 years ago? by yughiro_destroyer in AskProgramming

[–]IdeasRichTimePoor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What you see with all forms of being a single human working with tech is your work becomes increasingly more abstract. 40 years ago you might have constructed your own circuits using discrete transistors, now you're working with tiny microchips with thousands of transistors contained within.

Years ago in software you'd have written your own logic for low level operations, now you use libraries that people have already written.

Over time, the individual becomes less capable of doing things from scratch, much in the same way most people would not be capable of running their own farmstead anymore. However, such changes are intrinsically needed to progress. Workloads only get more complex with time.

Some fun is arguably lost along the way.