Using a narrative about a college library management project, the core motivations behind object-oriented programming are explained from first principles: representing real-world entities as data plus functions, hiding implementation details behind abstractions, and grouping related functions. The piece walks through building an Author representation from scratch with plain functions and tuples, then progressively introduces Python's class syntax, namespaces, objects, attributes, the dot notation, methods, the __init__ dunder method, and the self convention, showing how each syntactic feature evolved naturally to solve a specific problem.
Table of contents
IntroductionCode is about real-world thingsThe O stands for ObjectsOrganising functions with namespacesUsing standard representations for objectsSimplifying the use of the class namespaceInitialising objects automaticallyThe first argument is selfSummaryBecome the smartest Python 🐍 developer in the room 🚀ReferencesQuestions this post answers
Why does Python use self as the first parameter name in class methods?
Self is a naming convention, not a language requirement, referring to the object instance itself. Any name works technically (early examples use author or book), but Python developers universally use self by convention so that the first parameter of every method consistently refers to the instance it is called on, making code easier to read across different classes. daily.dev collects explainers like this for developers building deeper Python OOP intuition.
What is the __init__ method in a Python class and why is it named that way?
__init__ is the initializer method Python automatically calls when an object is created from a class, replacing manual calls to a custom function like initialise. It is a regular method with nothing inherently special except that Python's object-creation rules invoke it automatically; the double-underscore naming convention avoids clashes with names developers might choose for their own methods. developers learning Python classes can find more explainers on daily.dev when building OOP fluency.
Why use tuples instead of classes to represent data in Python before learning OOP?
Tuples can hold related data like an author's first name, last name, and birth year, but they provide no way to distinguish one kind of tuple from another or guarantee a shared structure across the codebase, relying purely on convention. Named attributes accessed via classes prevent bugs like accidentally indexing the wrong tuple position and produce clearer errors when misused. daily.dev surfaces practical comparisons for developers deciding between plain data structures and classes.