as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

OO is bollocks period :-).

(But then I don’t write python anyway)

I think that OO can be excellent, but, like so many things, can be bollocks if it is done purely for its own sake.

I use Python almost exclusively, even for things that would often be shell-scripted. It rocks ;)

I think you misunderstood my argument (or I simply didn’t communicate it well enough).

What I don’t like is the either/or approach. Python can maintain all its simplicity and strip itself of the Old World without having to go down some convoluted path.

Just as C#/Java apps have the concept of Main() (or main()), Python could have something similar.

The difference here is that you guys are talking about scripting, and the given example is very short. Mixing styles in such a short example isn’t a big deal, but would get pretty complicated pretty quickly for a full-blown app.

I guess it’s just that I think Python would be more useful if it didn’t have this duality to it.

Oh, I agree entirely that mixing styles in a larger app would be complex, but the solution there is: don’t do that. And indeed, people do not; I’ve never seen a Python app of even reasonable size which isn’t through-and-through OO.
My point here is: I don’t understand why it’s bad that it can be procedural. If you removed the procedural stuff then (a) it would not improve your ability to write larger apps (since they are all OO anyway) and (b) it would make it more difficult to write short scripty stuff. That, to my mind, is a net loss, and it is in no way balanced (again, in my mind) by a rather nebulous concern that it might be more confusing to allow both. Unless I’m still misunderstanding your point?

I don’t think there are two alternative Python styles, procedural and object oriented; rather there are two layered OO styles, just using objects or defining classes and methods before using objects, and Java always requires the latter for no good reason.

Simple programs like the split/join one-liner in the example need only classes from existing libraries and complex programs need their own abstractions; but Python is completely object oriented in all cases, even when fancy features like comprehensions and generators are used.

The influence of dumbed down languages like Java has convinced people that

class Example{
  public static void main(String[] args){
    System.out.println("Hello world");
  }
}

is more object oriented and better than

print "Hello world"

or

#include <stdio.h>
int main (int argc,char**argv){
  printf("Hello world");
}

but the three programs do the same thing with the same object (the string) and vary only in the amount of additional cruft.
In fact the Java version, with its two useless classes Example and System, is a worse style of OOP than the unencumbered C version.

If you make Python completely OO you run the risk of turning it into Java. One of the things I like about Python is it isn’t so strictly straight jacketed as Java (or C#). The canonical example of this is stand alone functions. In Python you just create them at the module level, in strict OO you end up with a class with static class methods [1]. I know which I’d rather type.

OO is good, but only when I need it, and I don’t always need it.

[1] http://dirtsimple.org/2004/12/python-is-not-java.html