Is it possible that encapsulation just doesn't work, in general? It really boils down to a library author saying "trust me, this'll work great!" Sometimes it

Is it possible that encapsulation just doesn't work, in general? It really boils down to a library author saying "trust me, this'll work great!" Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't. In that light, Python's convention that a leading underscore means "probably better avoided" seems pretty reasonable. This is especially true for Python, where the type system gives you no guarantees about anything.