skipping __init__ and using exploiting a class member instead

[Peter Cacioppi]

>The use of getattr here seems unfortunate

Unfortunate how? It's a perfect for what I want here ... remember the context is such that the lazily stored value is always truthy (I assert this elsewhere).

>   I'm not sure why you want to avoid an __init__ method.

Why do you want to keep it?  The more code you write the more bugs you write. Who knows, maybe I screw up the argument pass to the super __init__. Maybe I screw up the super reference. Didn't Einstein say make it as simple as possible, but no simpler?

Personally, I find the ability of Python to subclass without overriding the constructor very elegant. I don't believe the other languages I've worked in can do this (C++, C#, Java)... or if there is a way it's a bit scary and discouraged. Whereas skipping the __init__ seems to be a standard part of the Python OO development process.

Again, this is just the lazy eval pattern. In C#, for example, I'd write my constructors but refer to _lazy only in the foo function and in it's declaration line (which would explicitly default initialize it).

At any rate, the second idiom is very pretty to me, I'm keeping it unless a compelling argument is presented. Thanks for the kibbutzing though, the first idiom was poor form, as I suspected.