"Phillip J. Eby" <pje@telecommunity.com> writes:
At 01:39 PM 10/24/03 -0700, Zack Weinberg wrote:
class foo: A = 1 # these are class variables B = 2 C = 3
def __init__(self): self.a = 4 # these are instance variables self.b = 5 self.c = 6
I find this imperative syntax for declaring instance variables profoundly unintuitive. Further, on my first exposure to Python, I thought A, B, C were instance variables, although it wasn't hard to understand why they aren't.
A, B, and C *are* instance variables. Why do you think they aren't?
You prove my point! I got it wrong! This is a confusing part of the language!
What good does declaring the set of instance variables *do*? This seems to be more of a mental comfort thing than anything else. I've spent most of my career in declaration-free languages, though, so I really don't understand why people get so emotional about being able to declare their variables.
Yeah, it's a mental comfort thing. Mental comfort is important. Having the computer catch your fallible human mistakes is also important. zw