Why 'class spam(object)' instead of class spam(Object)' ?

[Sergio Correia]

Thanks for the replies, very instructive!

On 9/7/07, Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> Carl Banks wrote:
> > On Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:30:00 -0500, Sergio Correia wrote:
> >> Hi, I'm kinda new to Python (that means, I'm a total noob here), but
> >> have one doubt which is more about consistency that anything else.
> >>
> >> Why if PEP 8 says that "Almost without exception, class names use the
> >> CapWords convention", does the most basic class, object, is lowercase?
> >
> > It said "almost".  :)
> >
> Indeed it did, and never forget that most of PEP 8 was derived from an
> essay by Guido whose original title was "A Foolish Consistency is the
> Hobgoblin of Little Minds" ...
> >
> >> I found a thread about this:
> >> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-April/437365.html
> >> where its stated that -object- is actually a type, not a class; but the
> >> idea still doesn't convince me.
> >
> You don't have to be convinced. You just have to do what the PEP says
> yourself and ignore the people who *haven't* done what it says
> (particularly if they are core Python developers).
>
> > There's a false dichotomy there: it's not an either-or situation.  Almost
> > everyone would agree that new-style classes, defined by the Python class
> > statement, are both classes and types.  Some might squabble over whether
> > object is class, but it has nothing to do with why object is spelled in
> > lower-case.
> >
> > The reason why "object" is lower case is because built-in types are
> > spelled in lower-case.  Why are built-in types lower case?  Because many
> > built-in types were originially functions.  For example, "int" and "str"
> > were once functions.  When these symbols became the names of their
> > respective types, they kept the lower-case spelling, and it became
> > convention for built-in types to be spelled lower-case.
> >
> In other words: "Get over it" ;-)
>
> regards
>   Steve
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