__init__() not called automatically

[Michele Simionato]

If you really want, you can customize the object system
to automatically call __init__, via a custom metaclass.
There is an example in my ACCU lectures (cooperative_init.py):

http://www.reportlab.org/~andy/accu2005/pyuk2005_simionato_wondersofpython.zip

Michele Simionato

 

[Simon Brunning]

And the correlary wart in Python is that the first argument to a
method is not required to be called "self". The vast majority of
people use "self", but every once in a great while you run into some
yahoo who feels this is the right place to express his creativity and
call it "this", or "obj", or some other obfuscation.

To be fair, it's easy to use 'this' by accident if you've recently
been working with Java. I've done it myself. It takes me an hour or to
reset my brain, and for a short while, there are bloody 'this'es,
braces and semi-colons everywhere.

Sanity soon returns, though.