The points are serious issues. However, the best summary comes from Karl Guertin: "My explanation is that Duck Typing is like Ethernet, in theory it will break, but in practice it works pretty well."

There were three questions which raised four issues. The questions included the seemingly incomplete OO implementation …

I do a fair amount of manual refactoring. I've used WebSphere Studio (Eclipse) to do some automated refactoring, so I have some experience in using IDE's which exploit Java's static type-checking.

However, the question of type checking in a dynamic language is interesting. I don't use a sophisticated IDE for …

In one case, the prospect had 7 interlocked databases, and wanted to do a technology upgrade. In other cases, the numbers was larger (up to 30, I think) but the problem was the same.

Essentially they said "It's taking us forever to rework this design. What should we do that …

Once I learned C++, all my C programming became poor-man's OO.

• Every "class" became a C structure type.
• Every class structure was implemented as a header file that defined the structure and a bunch of method functions.
• Each method function would have a "self" argument, which was a pointer to …

In a recent code review, I saw a bizarre habit. The author defended it so vehemently, I gave up on trying to explain the needless confusion it caused. The author was one of those "I always do it this way, and I'm always right." people, so nothing was gained by …

It appears that I may have been doing the right thing in putting together Building Skills in Object-Oriented Design . Expertise is grown through "effortful study" of the material. Experts search through their long-term memory for applicable patterns, based on their study.

The idea of many exercises, each exposing a piece …

Simple object persistence (i.e., serialization to a file system) is what pickle, marshal and shelve do.

However, here's the next thing of some interest OODB's.

Zope's ZODB . The original OODB for Python, the backbone of Zope.

buzhug : "a fast, pure-Python database engine, using a syntax that Python programmers should …

This is something that elevates Doctest into the realm of Pattern. Perhaps even above that.

The idea is so elegant: the document is the test, and the test procedure is the document.

There's a DRY clarity to the whole thing that is rather exciting. It is an elegant application of …

Ian Bicking: A Blog http://blog.ianbicking.org/, provided some info on Py3K and Python Introspection http://blog.ianbicking.org/introspecting-expressions-in-py3k.html.

For me, the interesting part was his summary of Object-Relational Mapping. Mr. Bicking identifies two broad approaches: lambda introspection and operator overloading.

A number of testing frameworks were used. The Agile Testing tutorial provides a path through the toolsets, showing what you can do, and how you should do it.

Unit Testing: [Nose ], <{filename}/blog/2005/11/2005_11_09-compare_and_contrast_round_3_revised.rst>

Acceptance Testing: [FitNesse ]

Regression Testing: [TextTest ]

Functional Testing: [twill ]. A thorough analysis is …