Semantics question...

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

> Excellent observation.  This is indeed the origin of the "self." prefix
> requirement.  But I discovered that this is actually an advantage rather
> than a problem, and I would never want to go back to Java or C++.

Speaking of Java and C++, for those of you that have to use those
languages on a regular basis, instead of using a naming convention
such as "m_", you can just follow python's lead.  Much of my java code
now has an explicit "this." in front of member variables.  Sure, it's
3 characters more typing, but it's a lot easier to understand if
someone else is looking at the code the first time.

(And if typing bothers you: python lets you call 'self' whatever you
like, so you can have 'm.' instead of 'm_' and have your naming
convention enforced!  Although, for obvious reasons, I prefer 'self'.)

Has anyone else noticed how cool the idea of an "unbound method" is,
by the way?  If I need to "borrow" some functionality, I can just grab
an unbound method and run it as a function with a different "self".
This is obviously bad form, but it helps when I'm refactoring to be
able to see *clearly* places where I needed to do that, and to be able
to do it without copying and pasting.

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