Another try at Python's selfishness

[n.estner at gmx.de]

> That usage (self is second parameter to B.test) is bound
> to cause trouble in general, but in this case doesn't have
> any effect I can see.  The function call "test" would be
> resolved from its first parameter, instance of A, and that
> function would return 1.  One of us is missing something
> here, could be me.

Probably my example wasn't clear, let's try another:

  class A:
    def test(a, **kwargs): return 1
  class B:
    def test(b, **kwargs): return 2
  test(a=A(), b=B())

"self" isn't a keyword, so nothing should forbid this code. What is the
interpreter to do if it stumbles across this "test" call? I mean,
named-argument lookup is a tricky thing even if you do know what
function you're calling. If this would depend on one of the parameters,
I think it would become completely unintelligible. (you can think of
more complex examples yourself)

> That's exactly the problem, it doesn't read from left to right,
> because we swap back and forth between function(parameter and
> parameter.function notation.

That's because they're doing two different things: object.method() does
an attribute lookup, while function(parameter) looks for the function
in the current scope.