That's not at all what Python does. It linearizes the inheritance hierarchy for the purposes of superclass attribute lookup, in an attempt to solve some aspects of the diamond problem, or at least make them solvable. But it doesn't touch the types themselves, only the MRO used by the super builtin. That's why the super builtin type takes both the "current" class and the object instance itself, which was more visible before the whining of people who didn't understand it grew too loud to be borne by the maintainers and the project introduced the `super()` syntactic sugar. Not that I'm bitter about that or anything.
Anyway, your argument seems to be that you should be able to use naively written classes in a multiple inheritance hierarchy. I suppose that's a defensible opinion, but it's also not the case in any language I know of; C++ solves the problem of not calling the "correct" superclass by default by foisting the responsibility of choosing the correct subset onto the derived class author, but doesn't solve the "I called my superclass' method too many times" problem, only the "I have too many (n>1) copies of my superclass' data" problem (the solution to which is also opt-in). Python resolves all three of these, but in so doing requires careful construction of multiple inheritance hierarchies and use of the super builtin that is religious to the point of fanatical. That's a tradeoff made in respect to a feature that, IMO, is inherently sharp.
Aside: "idiosyncratic" is an interesting word to use given that the C3 MRO was originally intended for Dylan.
I know what's going on and my comment was sufficiently accurate to get the point across in 1 sentence. I wasn't exactly intending to get into a lecture on MRO here.
> C++ solves the problem of not calling the "correct" superclass by default by foisting the responsibility of choosing the correct subset onto the derived class author
Which is much better than leaving a ticking time bomb.
> doesn't solve the "I called my superclass' method too many times"
Er, yes it does. Every class instance in a hierarchy is initialized exactly once. Trying to call it twice will produce an error (e.g. "class has already been initialized").
> Python resolves all three of these
It does not. It's perfectly fine letting you call a class's __init__ multiple times. Unlike with C++.
> Aside: "idiosyncratic" is an interesting word to use given that the C3 MRO was originally intended for Dylan.
It is a fine word. "Idiosyncrasy" does not imply there exists only 1 person in the whole world engaging in the given practice:
"Her habit of using “like” in every sentence was just one of her idiosyncrasies."
Anyway, your argument seems to be that you should be able to use naively written classes in a multiple inheritance hierarchy. I suppose that's a defensible opinion, but it's also not the case in any language I know of; C++ solves the problem of not calling the "correct" superclass by default by foisting the responsibility of choosing the correct subset onto the derived class author, but doesn't solve the "I called my superclass' method too many times" problem, only the "I have too many (n>1) copies of my superclass' data" problem (the solution to which is also opt-in). Python resolves all three of these, but in so doing requires careful construction of multiple inheritance hierarchies and use of the super builtin that is religious to the point of fanatical. That's a tradeoff made in respect to a feature that, IMO, is inherently sharp.
Aside: "idiosyncratic" is an interesting word to use given that the C3 MRO was originally intended for Dylan.