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Comment by zwp | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that Python is the exception here. Those of us that learnt other languages first already have a mental model and find this explicit self parameter weird. And it's more typing.

Yegge thinks that "self" is a wart and I agree. The article is a fun read but it's showing its age. I suspect Python might just have beaten Perl by now.

https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel#TOC-...

I suppose Python's way there's one less reserved word. Are there any other advantages?

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I also like how you can call the method on the class and pass self in explicitly. e.g.:

    class Foo:
      b = 4
      def foo(self, a):
        return a + self.b

    inst = Foo()
    inst.foo(3)
    Foo.foo(inst, 3)

I haven't written python in a while, but I really like that python makes this possible and obvious and I've found this behavior pretty handy when working in a more functional style.

Also, I find writing languages with an implicit self like Java, Kotlin and Scala really irritating because there's nothing to distinguish access to a locally-scoped variable or function from access to a class member. I've always appreciated how, in Python, `x` always refers to something bound according to Python's pseudo-lexical scoping rules while class members always have a `self.` to make them stand out.

These days, however, I mostly write Common Lisp and Clojure which, each in their own way, have explicit selfs: Common Lisp because it uses multiple dispatch and, consequently, there isn't one "self" and Clojure's protocols are designed to dispatch on the first argument, which is always passed explicitly.

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