[Edu-sig] Ditch "self"?

[kirby urner]

Guido: "Personally, I find that the criticism of explicit self has
about as much merit as the criticism of Python's use of
whitespace."

[ http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=214325 ]

Ya, my thought as well.

Lotsa people with nasty bad Java habits come kibitzing to Python's
door, expecting to be taken seriously (not! -- except sometimes).

What I like about 'self', as much documented here (edu-sig), is it
ain't a key word, i.e. it's a placeholder in which any unicode glyph
might go.

And as discussed with John Zelle, I see advantages into projecting
a sense of one's self into 'self' -- *not* as some exercise in introversion,
but in order to better empathize with some external knowledge domain
(dams, horse farms whatever).

"I am an hydraulic pump, these are my attributes" -- that kind of thing.

OO's use of "self" inherently promotes empathy *if* the pedagogy
is skillful, sensitive to future developer responsibilities (and if the
students are adepts, have true geek potential).

Believe it or not, all this connects to my math-thinking-l position that
women clearly control computer science (Ada... Grace Hopper), if
not other disciplines, and even if guys with big egos like to pretend
*they* do.

Kirby