Sweet dreams are made of this
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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In Python, self is not a keyword, it’s a conventional variable name. You can replace all instances of “self” with “this” and your code will work the same.
Lua might have been a better choice, since self is special in lua.
Kinda.
Lua defines it implicitly only when you use the
function foo:bar(a, b, c) -- note the colon
syntactic sugar, which gets translated to
function foo.bar(self, a, b, c)` -- note the period
In all other cases, self is a regular variable name. You can even redeclare a new local with that name even when the old one is in scope.
Python is just distancing itself from JS.
Alternative image for C: Mr. Incredible: "A PARAMETER IS A PARAMETER!"
Partially unrelated to the meme, but I find it almost malicious how some python keywords are named differently from the nearly universal counterpart of other languagues.
This/self, continue/pass, catch/except and they couldn't find a different word for switch so they just didn't implement it.
It's as if the original designers purposefully wanted to be different for the sake of it.
Python does have a switch statement now, actually. And yes, they went out of their way to call it something different - match.
https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/controlflow.html#match-statements
match isn't just equivalent to switch though, so in this case it actually makes sense to call it something different.
PHP naming "::" a Paamayim Nekudotayim is also pretty infamous.
When I'm designing shit, I'm pretty zealous about borrowing terminology from anything even vaguely related to avoid this.
pass and continue are absolutely not equal (pass is a noop, and python has a continue keyword that does what you think), and switch is called match like in many other languages. except is weird though.
"except" is also used in Pascal (or at least the main derivatives of it), but not sure if that's older than its use in Python or not.
I read that self as a keyword also has quite a history. It was already used in Smalltalk, an OOP language from the early 80's.
Isn't self not actually a keyword? Like you can name the first variable in a class method anything and it will behave like self.
You could use "this" instead of "self". And if you want a lynch mob of Python programmers outside your house, make a push request with that to some commonly used package.
I think there will be a lynch mob of git users outside your house for calling PR as "push request".
I've been wondering about the noise.
Edit: turns out, they weren't there to lynch me. They just gave me a two hour lecture on proper usage of git.
TECHNICALLY, there is no such thing as a pull request in git. That's a Github convention. It's really a merge request
e: drat someone already out-pedantic'd me
only github users. git itself doesn't have PRs, and other forges call them different things. gitlab calls them merge requests, pico calls them patch requests...
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Iv come to loathe the "pythonic way" because of this. They claim they wanted to make programming easier, but they sure went out of their way to not follow conventions and make it difficult to relearn. For example, for me not having lambdas makes python even more complex to work with. List operations are incredibly easy with map and filter, but they decided lambdas weren't "pythonic" and so we have these big cumbersome things instead with wildly different syntax.
Maybe I'm missing something, but:
- Python Lambda Functions - https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_lambda.asp
- Python map - https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-map-function/
- They do have list comprehension, which let you basically one line a map operation more intuitively too.
So much Python criticism comes from people who don't know the language.
I mean, there is a lot wrong with it, but every language has its quirks. Generally I like discussing it's actual flaws cause it helps me better understand the language.
a lambdo which can only contain one expression, and not even a statement is pretty much useless. For anything nontrivial you have to write a separate function and have the lambda be just a function call expression. Which completely defeats the point
And switch cases (called match cases) are there as well.
I use lambdas all the time to shovel GTK signal emitions from worker threads into GLib.idle_add in a single line, works as you'd expect.
Previous commenters probably didn't look at Python in a really long time.
i mean tbf match case was only added in 3.10
Speaking of big cumbersome things with wildly different syntax have you tried a ternary operation in python lately? Omg that thing is ugly. JavaScripts is hard to beat.
uglyTernary = True: if python_syntax == “shit” else: False prettyTernary = javascript_syntax == “pretty” ? true : false
That’s just because you’re used to it. The pythonic ternary is structured like spoken language, which makes it easier to read, especially if you nest them.
Is there an objective argument for the conventional ternary, other than „That’s how we’ve always done it!“?
I don't read spoken language, but I do read written ones. The problem with python's ternary is that it puts the condition in the middle, which means you have to visually parse the whole true:expression just to see where the condition starts. Which makes it hard to read for anything but the most trivial examples.
The same goes for comprehensions and generators
If the conventions suck you have to break them. How else can you improve things?
map and filter are almost always inferior to generators and comprehension expressions in terms of readability. If you prefer the former, it’s just because you got used to it, not because it’s better.
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TBF the last two bullet points are verbose descriptions of the thing it means in C++, Java, and Python too. It's just that in JS, "this" can also be used in other places.
But yeah, in practice, every time I write JS I want to throw my hands in the air and shout "this is bullshit", but never know what "this" refers to... :D
Yeah that's fair, though it also discusses that whole prototype thing that JS has going on
Rust: Borrow handler got mad at you for asking
(I'd assume)
It's either a reference to an object instance, or the instance itself (depending on whether you specified &mut self, &self or just self).
Don't forget Self, the type of self.
My JS:
Ah, you mean that?
In Python you can use this as a variable name
In Python you can use 🍆 as a variable name.
Edit: oops, guess I was mistaken, you can use most Unicode but emojis are not valid.
Edit: oops, guess I was mistaken, you can use most Unicode but emojis are not valid.
That actually seems even more arbitrary. Like, do they just hate fun?
you might be thinking of Rust.
Just going by the reputation, you probably can do this in JavaScript
~ $ python
Python 3.12.10 (main, Apr 9 2025, 18:13:11) [Clang 18.0.3 (https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/llvm-project d8003a456 on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> ❗ = 'nah'
File "<stdin>", line 1
❗ = 'nah'
^
SyntaxError: invalid character '❗' (U+2757)
>>>
~ $ node
Welcome to Node.js v23.11.1.
Type ".help" for more information.
> const 👍 = 'test'
const 👍 = 'test'
^
Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token
>
C supremacy
The source character set is implementation defined.
You can use anything that doesn't start with a digit or punctuation as a variable name (underscore beginning also allowed) unless it's a keyword.
_ (sic) as a variable name is often used when a function returns multiple outputs but you only want one
def my_function:
return 1, 2, 3
_, two, _ = my_function()Underscore alone is a special variable name and I'm pretty sure anything assigned to it goes straight to garbage collection. Whereas _myvariable is typically use to indicate a "private" class variable or method (Python doesn't have private so it's just a convention).
The last bullet point is not really that common anymore.
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