Factory functions?

[Roy Smith]

Typically, when I write a new class module, I'll call the class the same 
name as the module, and then create objects of that class by doing:

import foo
myFooObject = foo.foo()

I've always found this kind of awkward and ugly, and somewhat confusing, 
especially when the names are kind of long, i.e.

myFrobnitz = reverseIteratorFrobnitz.reverseIteratorFrobnitz()

It seems to me, you could "solve" this problem (I put "solve" in quotes 
because I'm not yet really convinced there's a problem that needs solving) 
by using a factory function, i.e.

-----file reverseIteratorFrobnitz.py-----

import iteratorFrobnitz

class reverseIteratorFrobnitz (iteratorFrobnitz.iteratorFrobnitz):
   def __init__ (self, name):
      self.name = name;
      self.interationSense = -1

def new (name):
   return reverseIteratorFrobnitz (name)

-----------------------------------------

Then when I want to use one of these, I just do:

import reverseIteratorFrobnitz
myFrobnitz = reverseIteratorFrobnitz.new ("Dinsdale")

What are the pros and cons of doing it one way or the other (i.e. calling 
the built-in class creator directly, or calling a trivial factory function 
to create an object for you and return it).  Is it really just a matter of 
style and esthetics more than anything else?