So called "magic" methods, which are called by Python in various circumstances, are surrounded by double underscores. One of such methods is __init__, which works as an initializer for newly created objects.

The other thing is that all methods, unless otherwise specified, take a pointer to the current object as a first argument. So when defining an initializer that takes no arguments from the user you write:

    def __init__(self): # etc.

BTW: Being "ugly" or not is not the best characteristic you can base your opinion of a language on.