Sorry to comment on such an old post, but I thought I'd respond anyway just in case anyone else stumbles across this. I had a very hard time understanding self at first too. This video is what finally made it 'click' for me, and hundreds of people in the comments said the same, so I highly suggest you give it a watch. You can skip to the part where he's using self if you'd like, but I think watching the whole video helps provide more context. That whole series is an excellent watch in general if you want to learn OOP. Why use 'self'? Imagine you had the following empty class: class Employee: pass You could assign a first_name and last_name variable to a new instance of this class like so: emp_1 = Employee() emp_1.first_name = "John" emp_1.last_name = "Doe" This is perfectly valid code, but imagine if you wanted to create many more employees with more variables such as email, phone_number, etc., for each. It would take up a lot of lines and there would also be repeated code. A better approach would instead be to define an __init__ method like so: class Employee: def __init__(self, first, last): self.first_name = first self.last_name = last I'll explain the above in a moment, but just know that we can now create new employees like this: emp_2 = Employee("Johnny", "Doey") emp_3 = Employee("Mark", "Smith") emp_4 = Employee("Jack", "Walker") Instead of like this: emp_2 = Employee() emp_2.first_name = "Johnny" emp_2.last_name = "Doey" emp_3 = Employee() emp_3.first_name = "Mark" emp_3.last_name = "Smith" emp_4 = Employee() emp_4.first_name = "Jack" emp_4.last_name = "Walker" The first way is much nicer, right? Of course, this is only 1 of the many benefits of using self, but I think it's a good example to start with nevertheless. So what actually is init and 'self'? __init__ (simply meaning 'initialize') is a special method that is called immediately after an instance of a class is created. It's the equivalent of the constructor in other languages such as C#. The self parameter just refers to a specific instance of the object itself. It does not need to be called 'self', but doing so is a very popular convention. You could technically replace self with something like emp in this case, if you wanted. You might be wondering "Where is this self parameter even coming from? I don't see it being passed in as an argument anywhere?". Well, when you instantiate a new object in Python, self is automatically passed through as the first argument, so you do not need to include it yourself. However, since self is kind of 'secretly' being passed in, this means that it now needs to be accepted as the first parameter in the __init__ method. Again, self refers to whichever object you are currently instantiating. In the below example, it refers to emp_1 , since that's the name of our variable. emp_1 = Employee("John", "Doe") In the above example, when emp_1 is instantiated, the __init__ method assigns "John" to first_name and "Doe" to last_name for the emp_1 object (self in this case), since those are the arguments that were passed through during instantiation. def __init__(self, first, last): self.first_name = first self.last_name = last More on reddit.com

Find step-by-step Computer science solutions and the answer to the textbook question What is "self" typically used for in a Python method within a class? A. To refer to the instance in which the method is being called B. To set the residual value in an expression where the method is used C. ... More on quizlet.com

What made the concept of self click for me, and this is completely ridiculous so you very well may get no miles out of this, but I treat building a class like building a Frankenstein monster. Attributes are physical features, methods are actions the monster can take, but "self" is what makes the monster alive, and thus self is the monster's (object's) "soul". That is, self is what made that particular monster (object) unique amongst other similar monsters (objects). I want to attack the village that is being mean about my sick experiments, and to really put a point on my powers, I also want to kidnap a villager. You know, evil scientist things. Since each monster has a soul, they can do independent things since the soul (self) makes them unique. Class Monster: def __init__(soul, name): soul.name = name def attack_village(): def kidnap_villager(): Now we "give life" to the monsters my instantiating (putting them on the table that lightning hits) two unique instances of the class: pat = Monster(pat) cris = Monster(cris) Despite being the "same" monster (same features, same look, same actions they can take), Pat and Cris can do things independently of the other. So I send Pat to kidnap a villager, and Cris to attack the village. pat.kidnap_villager() cris.attack_village() TL;DR: "self" is what makes each instance of a Class object unique. More on reddit.com

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