> ... This can be useful for catching and redirecting common misspellings ...
I can think of only one good reason to redirect spelling errors, and that's if you are a widely-used library and you want to support both "color" and "colour" (and similar Britishisms). Other than that, you're just asking for a headache.
Stuff like __getattr__ is particularly tricky. I also try to end __getattr__ code with an AttributeException, which I find really helps debugging. I like using this to dispatch calls to objects better built to fill them, but I try to do so explicitly within the __getattr__ code to give reviewers a clue as to what's going on. For example, I'll check the attribute name against a list before passing it on to the target object. Even if I intent to pass _everything_ to a target, I'll first check the target for the passed attribute with getattr(target, attribute name, False), so that failed passthroughs stay with the object calling them. (You can generate messages indicating the problem -- "Can't find 'RIAA' in object 'Nice'" and pass those to an AttributeException.) Ideally any string validly usable as an instance attribute should be findable somewhere in the code by grep.
What? When did that get discredited?
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12401/be-libe...