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The right way to 'call' a class attribute inside the same class

Juan C. juan0christian at gmail.com
Mon Dec 12 12:57:28 EST 2016 
On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 12:34 PM, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn
<PointedEars at web.de> wrote:
> First of all, the proper term for what you are doing there is _not_ “call”;
> you are _accessing_ an attribute instead.

Indeed, `accessing` seems better. I was looking for a better word but
couldn't find at the moment.

> To call something means generally in programming, and in Python, to execute
> it as a function instead: In the code above, the class object referred to by
> “Box” is called twice in order to instantiate twice (calling a class object
> in Python means to instantiate it, implicitly calling its constructor
> method, “__init__”, if any), and the global “print” function is called three
> times.

Since we are talking about Python terminology I believe that calling
`__init__` a constructor is also wrong. I've already seem some
discussions regarding it and the general consensus is that `__init__`
shouldn't be called constructor as it isn't really a constructor (like
Java/C# constructors). Some source:

- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4859129/python-and-python-c-api-new-versus-init
- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/674304/pythons-use-of-new-and-init
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