Why has __new__ been implemented as a static method?

[Gregory Ewing]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> I'm not entirely sure what he means by "upcalls", but I believe it means 
> to call the method further up (that is, closer to the base) of the 
> inheritance tree.

I think it means this:

    def __new__(cls):
       MyBaseClass.__new__(cls)

which wouldn't work with a class method, because
MyBaseClass.__new__ would give a *bound* method
rather than an unbound one.

Python 3's version of super() seems to work with
class methods, but Python 2's doesn't (or at least
I couldn't get it to work in a brief test). Also,
I don't think super() existed at all when __new__
was invented.

-- 
Greg