What is "self"?

[Michael Spencer]

What I've noticed is you can block the visibility of a class attribute,
which include methods, by inserting an object in the instance with the
same name.

[snip example of this behavior]

Yes, that's true for "non-data descriptors" (see last two bullets below)

Raymond Hettinger [http://users.rcn.com/python/download/Descriptor.htm]

>
> The important points to remember are:
>
> * descriptors are invoked by the __getattribute__ method
> * overriding __getattribute__ prevents automatic descriptor calls
> * __getattribute__ is only available with new style classes and objects
> * object.__getattribute__ and type.__getattribute__ make different calls to __get__.
> * data descriptors always override instance dictionaries.
> * non-data descriptors may be overridden by instance dictionaries.

Michael