[Python-ideas] Improve error message when missing 'self' in method definition

Nathan Goldbaum nathan12343 at gmail.com
Tue Oct 4 16:52:27 EDT 2016


Hi all,

Recently pypy received a patch that improves the error message one gets
when 'self' is missing in a method's signature:

https://mail.python.org/pipermail/pypy-dev/2016-September/014678.html

Here are the commits that implement the change in pypy:

https://bitbucket.org/pypy/pypy/commits/all?search=branch(better-error-missing-self)

I'm curious whether a similar improvement would also be received well in
CPython. In particular, this guides one to the correct solution for a
common programming mistake made by newcomers (and even not-so-newcomers).

Here is a case study that found this was a common source of errors for
newcomers:

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2960327

-Nathan
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