[Tutor] Declaration order of classes... why it is important?

[ALAN GAULD]

> What is still unclear to me, is what the staticmethods are for, though:
> since the reference to the object instance or to the class object are
> stripped away from the call, I wonder why not to use a module function
> instead.


First recall that xsstatic methods were historically the first attempt at 
giving Python class methods. (They were called staticmethods because 
C++ and Java define their class methods using the label 'static' )

The static method is still inside the class so it provides namespace 
protection. Thus if we want to create a search class method in each 
of three classes within the same module we can do so, whereas a
module function would need to take the class as an input parameter 
and probably then do a if/else type switch statement to manipulate/access 
the class attributes etc. Or you write 3 functions, one per class. 
Neither is very OO in approach.

But a classmethod would be equally suitable, if not better.

> The only difference I can think of between the two (static method and
> module function) is that the namespaces they "live in" are different


And that is significant.

Alan G