[Haskell-cafe] [OT] thoughts about OO vs. functional "philosophy"

[Dennis Raddle]

Indeed, Python does not enforce encapsulation. It has weakly enforced types
as well (duck typing for most objects). But it's still an opportunity to
follow an "encapsulation" convention and explain the purpose, while telling
my student he won't see the full OO implementation until he gets into Java
or C++.

I want to comment on Ramnath's point that encapsulation helps us hold fewer
things in our minds. I would agree that's part of it, but in a general
sense programming always involves more than we can hold in our minds and
never requires us to hold all of it at once.

Consider a mathematical proof that runs to 300 pages. We don't need to hold
the whole thing in our minds to create and understand it--but it's still
worth finding a way to simplify it so it takes fewer pages or less advanced
math.

Although we rarely prove a program's correctness in a strict sense, we
probably give some thought to a rough justification of the correctness of
our design choices, even if such a justification requires more thoughts
than we can hold at once. There is a benefit in encapsulating so that the
justification requires fewer thoughts -- say 20 thoughts instead of 200
thoughts.

Now, I'm not sure this is any closer to the heart of the matter. Maybe
Ramnath is more essentially correct. Comments welcome.
D



On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 7:23 PM Richard O'Keefe <raoknz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Serious question: does Python _have_ encapsulation?
> I know about the single-underscore convention and
> the double-underscore convention, but even double-
> underscore attributes and methods can be accessed
> freely from the outside if you use the class-name
> prefix.  That is, it makes it difficult to breach
> encapsulation by accident, but it doesn't take the
> Lock-Picking Lawyer from YouTube to breach
> encapsulation on purpose without breaking stride.
>
> On Mon, 11 Mar 2019 at 09:29, Dennis Raddle <dennis.raddle at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I have a thought about OO vs. functional programming .
>>
>> I'm moderately experienced with functional languages such as Haskell and
>> Purescript and have used OO for many years at work (Python, C++).
>>
>> I'm giving tutoring lessons in Python to a professional who wants to use
>> programming as part of his work. (He's an entrepreneur.) He is eager to
>> understand functional and OO styles within Python--he keeps asking about
>> the real benefit of each, not content with a superficial approach.
>>
>> I've explained about "encapsulation": gathering related functions
>> together and minimizing coupling to the rest of the program.
>>
>> He asks "why do we encapsulate?" I've explained that one reason is to
>> help we, the programmers, be confident that our code is correct.
>>
>> For example, in a class we try to isolate the implementation details from
>> the rest of the program, and the compiler helps enforce that.So when we're
>> writing our code and confirming to ourselves it's correct, we can make
>> simplifying assumptions. We know the rest of the program won't modify our
>> private variables and won't access us in any way other than the interface
>> we've presented to the world.
>>
>> I explained that a large program is like a corporation, and pieces of the
>> program are like individual employees. When we write a class or function,
>> in a sense we "become" that employee and "forget about" a lot of the
>> details of other employees. (i.e., encapsulation).
>>
>> Then has asked why functional programming is helpful. I explained about
>> referential transparency. Say we're a function: then other "employees"
>> (other functions) can trust us with simplifying assumptions, like no
>> side-effects.
>>
>> Then this thought occurred to me, which is nifty but maybe not the whole
>> story.
>>
>>
>> """
>> Say we're a class. Then the simplifying assumptions of OO allow *us* to
>> trust the *rest of the program* won't mess with us.
>>
>> Say we're a function. Then the simplifying assumptions of functional
>> style help the *rest of the program* trust that *we* won't mess with it.
>> """
>>
>> D
>>
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