classes vs dicts

[Josiah Carlson]

> Still, I think it is an overgeneralization to say that classes are
> just syntactic sugar for dictionaries.

How about this; classes are syntactic sugar for handling object 
namespaces.  Since object namespaces in Python are generally handled 
with dictionaries, classes are therefore syntactic sugar for dictionaries.

Before I read the tutorial on classes when I was learning Python that 
fateful afternoon years ago, I used dictionaries as the equivalent of 
instance namespaces.  For about 20 minutes it bothered me that I had to 
use quotation marks to get and set attributes, until I read the class 
portion of the tutorial and said "ah-hah, classes embed dictionaries as 
namespaces, perfect", or something like that.

  - Josiah