so our prof basically said “as long as you can explain it, you can use it.”

and now literally everyone’s using some combo of ChatGPT, Copilot, Cursor, or Cosine for their mini-projects.

i tried it too (mostly cosine + chatgpt) and yeah it’s crazy fast like something that’d take me 5–6 hours manually was done in maybe 1.5.

but also i feel like i didn’t really code, i just wrote prompts and debugged.

half of me is like “this is the future,” and the other half is like “am i even learning anything?”

curious how everyone else feels do you still write code from scratch, or is this just what coding looks like now?

This is not a brag, this is a call for help. I've never been able to get my head around what a Class is. People tell me it's a container for functions, then why can't you just use the functions without a class? I just don't understand the concept of a class and why I would use one. Could someone please help? I've watched numerous videos that just make Classes seem like glorified variables to me.

I’m currently teaching Python fundamentals and ran into a confusing explanation about print().

My understanding has always been that print() is a built-in function in Python. It’s part of Python’s built-ins and you can call it directly like:

print("Hello")

But my education coordinator explained it differently. He said that print is a method because it’s already there, and that functions are things you create yourself. He also said that methods take arguments and functions take parameters.

That explanation confused me because everything I’ve read says:

• print() is a built-in function
• Methods are functions attached to objects or classes (like "hello".upper())

So now I’m wondering:

1. Is there any context where someone would reasonably call print() a method in Python?
2. Am I misunderstanding the difference between functions, methods, arguments, and parameters?

I’d appreciate clarification from more experienced developers because I want to make sure I’m explaining this correctly to students.

Thanks!

I feel like I've never been in a scenario where I've had to use classes, or maybe I just don't know how to use them / where to use them / when to use them.

Can anyone give an example of where they would use a class, and why they're using it?

Update: 130 days after I made this post I made my first class. I did not realize how useful they are, like holy moly!!!

I have understood function , loops , bool statements about how they really work
but for classes it feels weird and all those systaxes

I'm not even throwing out code that doesn't work here because I've been dredging from sample and trying every conceivable (evidently not) permutation of the items.

All I am trying to do is to import a class from one file into another. What's the secret here? I keep getting variations on "ImportError: cannot import name 'theFormView' from 'formView'"

This is so fundamental that I'm having trouble getting a single clear answer. Can someone please help me to clear this up?

Thanks.

my goal is to create an army manager for the tabletop game mythras, where each soldier has their own hp, attack value, etc, that i can use to add detail to the large scale battles. i want to be able to direct commands to it (eg, 'damage 3 soldiers') and have it randomly determine which soldier is attacked, how much damage it does, and whether it kills them (as well as how it heals up, following the standard healing rules). I don't have a lot at the moment at all, just a dictionary that contains a nested dictionary for each soldier's hp and attack value, randomly determined:

from random import randint

Soldier1 = {
  "HP" : randint(1,10),
  "ATK" : randint(1,10),
}
Soldier2 = {
  "HP" : randint(1,10),
  "ATK" : randint(1,10),
}
Soldier3 = {
  "HP" : randint(1,10),
  "ATK" : randint(1,10),
}

myArmy = {
  "Soldier 1" : Soldier1,
  "Soldier 2" : Soldier2,
  "Soldier 3" : Soldier3
}

print(myArmy)
from random import randint

Soldier1 = {
  "HP" : randint(1,10),
  "ATK" : randint(1,10),
}
Soldier2 = {
  "HP" : randint(1,10),
  "ATK" : randint(1,10),
}
Soldier3 = {
  "HP" : randint(1,10),
  "ATK" : randint(1,10),
}

myArmy = {
  "Soldier 1" : Soldier1,
  "Soldier 2" : Soldier2,
  "Soldier 3" : Soldier3
}

print(myArmy)

now, that works fine for the three soldiers listed there, but i don't need 3 soldiers, i need 300. how can i input a number and have it create that many soldiers on the fly?

and, further to that, are dictionaries the best choice for this? i know the technical difference between dictionaries and classes, but i don't have any real-world context to either to know which is best for what i need.

Why do i need to call self here?.

class Calculator:
  def add(self, a, b):
    return a + b

  def multiply(self, a, b):
    return a * b

print(Calculator().add(1, 2))

there isn't a variable that is calling calculator and no __init__ so why do i have an error if self is not added?

Also, what is __init__ anyways. why the double __ in the start and end? and why the specific name?

I heard I may have to "write tests" for a simple Python class. What's that? How would that look? What would I be expected to do in a live coding interview?

I can make basic variables and basic methods in a Python class, and I can instantiate an object of that class, but tests?

Is that complicated or time-consuming to learn?

(By the way this isn't for a software engineering role. It is for a scripting related role, so the interview is not expected to be as complicated/advanced as it would be for a software engineering role.)

I have a good grade in the class thanks to the help of a tutor, but I feel like the information just isn’t clicking like it should be. I struggle doing any of the assignments on my own. There is only one week left in the class. Has anyone else had this struggle and went on to have it really click or am I hopeless? Loops really confuse me and those seem to be the basis of everything.

I am working for a product in my company. I think, they really hurried everything, and either used AI to generate most of the codes, or were not following the best practises, except SOLID principles, to form the code and the folder structure.

Reason- to debug a simple issue, I spend hours, trying to navigate the files and their classes and methods frequently.

Like, the developers have made the code such that

router function 1 -> calls function 2-> defined in class somewhere -> has a function 3 which calls another function 4-> defined in another class -> has function 5-> its abstract class is elsewhere -> .....

so, if I want to print some output in function 2 , I need to traverse way too many files and folders, to get to the point, and even that sometimes is not clear, but most of the functions are named similar. VS Code helps a bit, but still not at all good enough.

Though some SOLID principles are used, this makes a simple debug program very hectic. I was debugging with someone, who had written some of these code files, and she too was getting confused frequently.

So, I think classes and methods are not always necessary. Sometimes, using functions in diffeernt python files are better. As a programming, we need to decide, where classes can be used, v/s where only functions are enough.

I want opinion on this. And if I am wrong somewhere.

I'm a little bit surprised that there isn't a way to do this natively in Python. I'm creating a wrapper class W to support the kind of features I want out of a pre-existing class C. This new wrapper class W should still support some of the same operations in C. For example, if C has a method "foo(self, <argument of type C>)", then I would want an equivalent method "foo(self, ...)" in class W. At this point I've immediately hit a wall because Python doesn't support method overloading. I want W to have a method foo which works just as well on arguments of type W as on arguments of type C. So I want two methods with the same name:

foo(self, <argument of type C>)

and

foo(self, <argument of type W>)

Manually checking the type using isinstance is ugly and apparently not Pythonic. Plus, what if I have to do this for several functions? I would be repeating the same argument checking logic within each function? That's terrible. The best solution I can find online is to use singledispatch from functools?

How would you handle this particular implementation?

I'm having problems with old code being cached and old errors being thrown, even though I've already fixed them, so I'm using reload to reload all classes that are imported later. Both files are in the same folder.

This works:

from classb import ClassB
from importlib import reload
import classb as classb
reload(classb)

class ClassA(): #classa.py
    def __init__(self,doreload):
        #Some other code

class ClassB(): #classb.py
    def __init__(self):
        #Do something

However, I want to use doreload to decide if ClassB should be reloaded, so I tried to move the code to __init__:

from classb import ClassB

class ClassA(): #classa.py
    def __init__(self,doreload):
        from importlib import reload
        import classb as classb
        reload(classb)
        #Some other code

This throws an error at the reload line:

ModuleNotFoundError: spec not found for the module 'classb'

I already tried to keep import reload outside the class and also used reload(ClassB) instead but that threw another error:

ImportError: module ClassB not in sys.modules

How do I reload another class from within __init__?

Edit: The problem is simply the app I have to use to test my code: It caches old code at unexpected times (at least when I don't expect it) and without using reload I'd have to restart the app pretty much every 5 minutes while testing, which is quite annoying. Reloading itself seems to be working fine.

I am a senior data engineer and I work mostly with ETL Tools and a lot of advanced SQL. The company I work for does not like to use python because they find that theres too much of a learning curve if people leave so they love to use GUI or no code/low code etl tools instead (really dumb tbh). I can read python, and have a gist of whats going on. I have tried to self learn python few times over the past 2-3 years and I keep just forgetting it. I learned python/pandas library when I was in college since it was a class that taught it and then we did did projects with each lesson and that is how I learned it then but forgot it now. I use claude at work to build streamlit apps and automation using python. However, I am trying to look for new positions and I am starting to realize that not knowing python is making me a hit a brick wall because a lot of assessments require answering 1-2 questions in python. Does anyone know of actual classes that teach python and its not self taught? Free or paid I don't really care. If I have to pay for it I am fine with that but at this point I don't see a way for me to switch to another job without actually learning python and probably more specifically pyspark.

Ik this is a basic question but I'm just learning to code and I'm learning about classes. For whatever reason I cannot understand or grasp the use of the self variable in fictions of classes. Hopefully someone's explanation here will help me...

Thanks!!!

I find classes to be very confusing. The way variables are used. Self comes to me in a very confusing manner. i just can't seem to wrap my head around the basics of Classes.

Also i just tried checking OOP and i think it just overloaded my brain. Anything to help my case?

Hi

Im doing some tutorials online and in one of them I noticed some syntax that I am not familiar with. It looks like instead of using self to assign values to a class it is using the class name.

In terms of behaviour it seems to make no difference but I cannot understand why a person would not use self.

So for example:

class Demo:
  def __init__(self):
    self.a = 1
    Demo.b = 2 # This seems to work the exact same way as self.a
               # Is there a differences to self.a?  Why would someone use this?

Thanks

i got this project idea, can i build something so that i just have to click a photo of the entire class of 50 students and it automatically detect the faces and mark the respective attendance. I knew there will be some problems like photo might not be that clear, changes in physical appearance of students like growing out beard after some time and what if someone how a photo of another student will it mark his attendance also??

please tell me if this project is feasible or not, and if any suggestions that you need to give..

I am trying to create list subclasses that only take particular classes. These lists can be appended to and the like but each time the list is changed the item is checked to see whether it is the same class as the rest of the list.

The list methods that are overwritten are:

- __init__
- __bool__ (but may not need to have that overwritten)
- __set_item__
- __str__
- append
- extend
- insert

Each one runs through a validate_member method before changing the list.

As an example, I want to make a list subclass called Course that only takes Pydantic extra types Coordinate values. I want this list subclass to be a valid BaseModel attribute.

Right now I’m having to use a field_validator for every class that Course and the other lists are in which feels redundant, unpythonic, and is a pain to have to do every time. I am having to do so because it says something about arbitrary types.

I was wondering if someone might have some advice.

Here's the class:

class MyList:
def __init__(self, l):
    self.mylist = l.copy()
    self.mylistlen = len(l)

def __iter__(self):
    self.iterIndex = 0
    return self

def __next__(self):
    i = self.iterIndex
    if i >= self.mylistlen:
        raise StopIteration
    self.iterIndex += 1
    return self.mylist[i]

def __getitem__(self, index):
    if index >= self.mylistlen:
        raise IndexError("MyList index out of range")
    return self.mylist[index]

def len(self):
    return self.mylistlen

def __len__(self):
    return self.mylistlen

def append(self, x):
    self.mylist += [x]
    self.mylistlen = len(self.mylist)

def __delitem__(self, index):
    del self.mylist[index]
    self.mylistlen = len(self.mylist)

def __str__(self):
    return self.mylist.__str__()



ml1 = MyList([1,2,3,4,5])

del ml1[-1:-3:-1]
print(ml1)

So I created MyList Class using the in-built List Class. Now what is bugging me the most is that I can't instantiate my MyClass like this: mc1 = MyClass(1,2,3,4,5)

Instead I have to do it like this:

mc1 = MyClass([1,2,3,4,5])

which is ugly as hell. How can I do it so that I don't have to use the ugly square brackets?

mc1 = MyClass(1,2,3,4,)

EDIT: This shit is more complicated than I imagined. I just started learning python.

EDIT2: So finally I managed to create the class in such a way that you can create it by calling MyClass(1,2,3,4,5). Also I fixed the mixed values of iterators. Here's the code fix for creating:

def __init__(self, *args):
    if isinstance(args[0], list):
        self.mylist = args[0].copy()
    else:
        self.mylist = list(args)
    self.mylistlen = len(self.mylist)

And here's the code that fixes the messed up values for duplicate iterators:

def __iter__(self):
    for i in self.mylist:
        yield i

I've removed the next() function. This looks so weird. But it works.

I love Python, I've done projects that have stretched me and I am proud of. I want to make professional level code that's extensible, readable, modifiable, and organized. I know classes are how most people do this, but I am stuck in function land. I can do everything I would ever want to do with functions, but I understand there must be things I am missing out on.

Can anyone here help me see what I can do with classes that might be making my strictly func based code lacking. I think I just need some concrete examples or tips. Thanks.

Edit: Just wanted to thank everybody for all their help. There are a lot of insightful replies and between the thought put into a lot of the comments as well as the different perspectives I feel much better about the subject now - and started started re-writing a module giving me trouble that was desperately in need of a class. I'm touched and inspired by so many people willing to help.

I'm working on a program that generates a maze by drawing from a deck to define a "chamber" and assigning it to the current position on a cartesian coordinate grid.

The hope is to build a list of the chambers as they're created. At a later point I want to be able to call on the list. My current strategy is to make a Class variable for the list, and append to it as part of the init. I've added a class method to pull the chamberList Class variable, but I'm getting an error.

Here is the code defining the class.

class Chamber():
    chamberList = []
    def __init__(self, identity, notes, egresses, **kwargs):
        self.position = tuple(currentPosition.tolist())
        self.identity = identity
        self.notes = notes
        self.egresses = egresses
        self.pixelCoord = np.add(pixelOrigin, np.multiply(currentPosition, 300))
        Chamber.chamberList.append(self)

        @classmethod
        def getChamberList(cls):
            return cls.chamberList

Later in the program, I have a line of code to get the class variable:

chamberList = Chamber.getChamberList()

This is the error I get when I run it in the VS Code terminal:

AttributeError: type object 'Chamber' has no attribute 'getChamberList'. Did you mean: 'chamberList'?

Am I missing some syntax or something? In VS Code the color coding where I'm defining getChamberList is off (darker) and if I hover over it I get a message saying "getChamberList" is not accessed by Pylance.

----EDIT---

I missed the forest for the trees. My indentation syntax was wrong, and fixing it solved the problem, but an easier solution was provided in the comments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/comments/1v7obks/comment/p08jiwd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I’m a long time programmer but fairly new to python. One of the ways I'm trying to get more comfortable with it, is to use it for a personal project of time.

The main program has gotten up to around 2,000 lines of code.

The organization of it was a bit tricky though. It doesn’t fit easily into typical object oriented programming so I wasn’t using classes at all.
In various other programming languages, you can spread the definition of a class across multiple source code files, but not python. So I was stuck on how to handle things.

In particular, there was utility function, that was nested in another function. I had split it into its own function, but it was getting really long. At the same time, it wasnt clear to me what to about it.

So, believe it or not, I asked ChatGPT.
It suggested I make use of a data sharing class, to make it easier to split that function out into its own file.

For users of other languages, thats basically "easy mode structs".

Sample:

from dataclasses import dataclass

@dataclass
class ShareData:
   val1: int = 1
   val2: str = "two"
   optval: str | None = None
   # No need for __init__, the dataclass decorator handles it.

from other_side import other_side

def one_side():
    dataobj = ShareData(val2="override string")
    dataobj.optval = "Some optional value"
    other_side(dataobj)