"Greg Perry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote > That makes sense, thank you for the detailed explanation > Andrei. For this simple project I am working on, it looks > like the most direct route would be to use functions
Thats often the case. Often when people start with OOP they try to do everything with objects. Its possible but often not very efficient. > and only develop classes for the portions of the program > that can be reused. > Is it safe to say that classes are only useful for instances > where reuse is a key consideration? Its not only for reuse. Classes and objects are often a more natural model of the real world. One of the best examples is a GUI program where each window or control can be treated as an object. Thats intuitively obvious because to our eyews it looks and acts somewhat like a real world object. But you rarely reuse the specific controls or windows developeed for a particular project. (Widgets are another matter, they are designed for reuse) > seems that classes are in most cases overkill for simple > tasks Yes thats true. OOP was invented as a way to control complexity in large programs. It can be used in smaller programs but if you only have a dozen or so linres of executable code then classes may well be overkill. > such as reading the command line then calculating a > hash/checksum to verify integrity If you had a lot of different data types each with their own checksum algorithm then classes and objects might be appropriate but a single case would usually be easier using functions. HTH, -- Alan Gauld Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
