POOP: Python infected by Smalltalk

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A provocation aimed at object orientation Link to heading

There is a quote from Alan Kay that has been following me for years:

OOP is, essentially, about message passing.

The first time I heard about it, I pretended to understand and went on writing if and for like always. But the idea would not leave my head. The final push came from Sandi Metz’s talk Nothing is Something, where she shows how to replace nil, conditionals and operators with objects that respond to messages, including a Null Object that knows how to behave like any other. I left it with a huge urge to make a concrete provocation to Python: what if I removed everything that looks procedural, even when it isn’t? I know that print(x) ends up calling __str__ and that len(x) delegates to __len__; Python’s data model is remarkably coherent in that regard. But the look of those calls is that of a free function, not of a message to an object. No if, no for, no print(x), no len(x). Everything has to look like a message sent to an object.

When Python Meets RPG: Rolling Dice with Style

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Shall we roll the dice? Link to heading

Imagine being able to write RPG dice rolls as naturally as:

3 * D6 + 2 * D10

And running a roll simply with:

(3 * D10 + 1 * D4).roll()

That is possible in Python through operator overloading! Let’s create a DSL (Domain Specific Language) to make dice rolling intuitive and expressive.

A Bit of Context Link to heading

In my teenage years I was an RPG game master and had a lot of fun playing Vampire: The Masquerade and Tagmar. Recently, while taking an online Smalltalk course, I came across a similar example of a dice rolling DSL. I found the idea brilliant and decided to implement it in Python! It was a lot of fun exploring how operator overloading can create such a natural and expressive interface.

Oop on cassiobotaro

POOP: Python infected by Smalltalk

A provocation aimed at object orientation Link to heading

When Python Meets RPG: Rolling Dice with Style

Shall we roll the dice? Link to heading

A Bit of Context Link to heading