function v. method

[bayerj]

I guess the python devs are not interested in implementing something
that would require new syntax and does not give something entirely new
to the language.

The good thing about python is, that the devs are only implementing
ideas that are very cool. There are a lot of cool (!= very cool) ideas
in rejected peps - but they were never implemented for good reasons.

If you *really* need privates, just use the naming convention.