Why self?

[Terry Reedy]

"Robb Shecter" <rs at onsitetech.com> wrote in message
news:3D29CE9D.4000802 at onsitetech.com...
> Matt Gerrans wrote:
> I completely agree, but I think the situation's even worse than you
> described:  A'typical' case of standard OO programming is made the
most
> tedious to write:  References to instance variables from methods:
>
>      self.__velocity = self.__factor1 * self.__factor2
>
> etc.  I find this totally unreadable (7 extra characters per
referenced
> instance variable).

Only 2 'extra' chars are needed -- a letter and '.'.  Why the extra
'__'?

TJR