In C++, the the approach to the namespace problem is having different namespaces that should not contain different definitions of the same name. Members of a namespace can be accessed explicitly by e.g. calling "std::cout<< etc." or "using namespace std; cout<< etc." I understand Pythons approach to be "objects can be used as namespaces and their attributes are the names they contain". I find this a very beautiful way of solving the issue, but it has a downside, in my opinion, because it lacks the "using" directive from C++. If the object is a module, we can of course do "from mymodule import spam, eggs". But if it is not a module, this does not work. Consider for example: class Spam(object): def frobnicate(self): self.eggs = self.buy_eggs() self.scrambled = self.scramble(self.eggs) return self.scrambled> 42 This could be easier to implement and read if we had something like: class Spam(object): def frobnicate(self): using self: eggs = buy_eggs() scrambled = scramble(eggs) return scrambled> 42 Of course this opens a lot of conceptual questions like how should this using block behave if self doesn't have an attribute called "eggs", but I think it is worth considering.