Attack a sacred Python Cow

[Michael Torrie]

Nikolaus Rath wrote:
> No, but it could work like this:
> 
> def a(x, y):
>      self.x = x
>      self.y = y
> 

Frankly this would make reading and debugging the code by a third party
to be a nightmare.  Rather than calling the variable self as I did in my
example, I could it in a much better way:

def method(my_object, a, b):
    my_object.a = a
    my_object.b = b


Now if I saw this function standalone, I'd immediately know what it was
doing.  In fact, I can even unit test this function by itself, without
even having to know that later on it's monkey-patched into an existing
class.

With your idea, I might get the picture this function should be used as
a method in some object because of the self reference, but I can't test
the method by itself.  Trying to call it would instantly result in an
exception.  And if this was a large function, I might not even see the
self reference right away.