Howdy --
My two bits:
* Class methods basically exist to mask dogmatic language design.
They make sense in languages with shitty namespace support (Java,
Objective-C) but they're lame in Python. Speaking as someone who has
taught a lot of people to program in a lot of languages: nobody gets
class methods. The concept of classes as a first-class object comes
very late in a programmer's maturity, and trying to explain what
happens when you call a class method to a first-timer is very
difficult. Django's not just for experienced Python programmers,
it's also for first time web developers to whom "stories.get_list()"
makes sense.
* The reason a module is better is because if you were writing the
generated code by hand, you'd probably use use a module Written by
hand, you'd do:
class MyModel():
...
class AddManipulator():
...
class AddManipulator():
...
not something like:
class MyModel():
class AddManipulator():
...
right? This is easy to explain: "if you were doing this by hand,
you'd write a get_list() method in your module, but that's boring so
Django does it for you."
* Prettiness is very important to me. If I didn't care how my code
looked I'd still be writing PHP. Allowing Poll.get_list() is a
problem, because than I can't have a relation named
"list";Poll.table.get_list() is ugly As, for that matter, is
Poll.get_list(). I'm not getting a list of Poll, I'm getting a list
of polls. Python rocks because it's so readable; Django similarly
rocks that way.
This isn't about name-churn, it's about making code "look" right.
"from django.models.foo import bar" has always looked wrong; "from
ellington.news.models import stories" looks right.
"stories.Story.get_object()" looks wrong; "stories.get_object()"
looks right.
Robert Wittams writes:
Just look at the downsides to the magic generated class : wierdo
issues
with visibility, importing, naming, inheritance (quite apart from the
odd current interpretation of inheritance, things like mixins are a
nightmare. Georg had something about this somewhere as well)....
* The fix solves the visibility problems, solves naming issues, and
makes importing crystal clear. Inheritance is quite unrelated to this
as are mixins.
* Good calls on a point release before the change and doing the work
on the branch.
Finally, I know that syntax changes are controversial, but the tone
of this discussion is already a little hot. Let's all please try to
keep things civil and remember that whatever we come up with will
kick PHP's ass six ways to Sunday.
Jacob
