FEEDBACK WANTED: Type/class unification

[Sam Penrose]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Correct on both counts again.

>> One minor suggestion:
>> I think it would help if you set a convention for the name
>> of the first argument in classmethods. Like self for standard
>> methods. Well, even self can "work" here, too.

> I think 'self' would be confusing.  I'd like to propose 'cls'.

How about an English word or phrase in lieu of YATATL (yet another
terse acronym to learn)? Insofar as "self" derives from the notion of
an instance, we want somethign that derives from the notion of one's
classification. 

The GNU-based Roget's Thesaurus at
<http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/ROGET.html>
suggests for "class" :

division, category, categorema[obs3], head, order, section;
department, subdepartment, province, domain.  kind, sort, genus,
species, variety, family, order, kingdom, race, tribe, caste, sept,
clan, breed, type, subtype, kit, sect, set, subset; assortment;
feather, kidney; suit; range; gender, sex, kin.

I like order, genus, and kind. On balance I guess "kind" seems best:
short, appropriate, and not a term I've noticed used in the corners of
the language I deal with.