Steve Yegge is an idiot
enfranchisedmind.com
enfranchisedmind.com
If you didn't know who Steve Yegge was, and found this article, would you go explore the back-story to make your own judgement, or just assume that he's an idiot, as claimed by the article?
That said, it is unfortunate that the blogger tries to get his point across through a title that gratuitously insults Steve. It is even more sad that these titles turn out to be the best way to capture people's attention. I'm assuming that the post would have gotten a fraction of the page views (and upvotes) if it had used a more reasonable title.
Apart from the satire aspect, I think the strictness of enforced contracts is a difference in mindset between Eiffel/C++/Java people and those coming from Lisp and other dynamic languages.
[1]: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/07310c842f...
If they ever do add anal as an actual keyword is Java then I will start using it.
Seriously though, I always thought Python's approach to encapsulation was a bit weak (my background = Delphi and C#) but after reading all this it's more like having your cake and eating it too.
So apparently the point of having the private keyword is so you can point the finger at your coworker and say, "You should have made that private!"
If not, it looks like its not Steve Yegge who's the idiot.. time for somebody to look in the mirror perhaps?