Answer by Bugs Buggy for What is the purpose of the word 'self'?

The use of the argument, conventionally called self isn't as hard to understand, as is why is it necessary? Or as to why explicitly mention it? That, I suppose, is a bigger question for most users who look up this question, or if it is not, they will certainly have the same question as they move forward learning python. I recommend them to read these couple of blogs:

1: Use of self explained

Note that it is not a keyword.

The first argument of every class method, including init, is always a reference to the current instance of the class. By convention, this argument is always named self. In the init method, self refers to the newly created object; in other class methods, it refers to the instance whose method was called. For example the below code is the same as the above code.

2: Why do we have it this way and why can we not eliminate it as an argument, like Java, and have a keyword instead

Another thing I would like to add is, an optional self argument allows me to declare static methods inside a class, by not writing self.

Code examples:

class MyClass():    def staticMethod():        print "This is a static method"    def objectMethod(self):        print "This is an object method which needs an instance of a class, and that is what self refers to"

PS:This works only in Python 3.x.

In previous versions, you have to explicitly add @staticmethod decorator, otherwise self argument is obligatory.