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Stop Writing Classes

Next Day Video · 961.8K views · 2012-03-15 · 27:29

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Overview

Jack Diederich's PyCon 2012 talk argues that classes are overused in Python and walks through real code, refactoring away unnecessary classes, exceptions and modules. It popularized the heuristic that a class with two methods, one being __init__, should be a function.

On Hacker News

HN returns to it repeatedly as the canonical argument for simplicity and against premature abstraction, and several commenters say it changed how they write code.

Recommended by 8 HN people across 8 months · HN mentions 2012–2025

Topics

Python, Ruby & scripting languagesSoftware architecture & design
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pythonpyconobject-oriented designrefactoringsimplicity

What people said

michelpp · 2020-03 · Strong recommendation

I also tend to avoid writing many classes (in Python). Jack Diederich has a great video called Stop Writing Classes: [VIDEO] It's about Python, but the observation can apply to several languages. Pithy quote: "I hate code and I want as little of it as possible in our product."

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kyleperik · 2018-04 · Strong recommendation

Stop writing classes is one of my favorites. Also many pycon talks are great, or any talks by Brandon Rhodes. [VIDEO]

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Vaskivo · 2014-12 · Strong recommendation

Stop writing classes - Jack Diederich - [VIDEO] Show them this. I'm still grateful for the moment I grew dissatisfied with OOP, or at least OOP in the Java/C# way. I was almost getting to an intermediate level in python (by myself) and had been thinking about a video game architecture problem I just couldn't solve. I was still "indoctrinated" in the gang-of-four patterns and inheritance. When I discovered the solution, Entity Component Architectures[1], I also discovered the "composition over inheritance" philosophy. My mind was blown! Coupled with some Python's characteristics (duck-typing, everything is public, first-class functions) I was having a blast. Then I saw the video above, and all fell into place. Class based OOP have specific uses, but It's a shame how heavily enforced the paradigm is. “Sometimes, the elegant implementation is just a function. Not a method. Not a class. Not a framework. Just a function.” – John Carmack Now, for scripts or not-to-big programs in Python, I mainly use NamedTuples for passing data around and (mostly) pure functions. P.S. Another funny thing: At my job I use J2EE aka "lots of hinheritance and classes and boilerplate". Sometimes I just have to go home and write some code in python or lua to "cleanse my palate". It helps me get motivated for my personal projects. [1] [LINK]

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Sources

Video by Next Day Video, played through YouTube.

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