In his book Learn Python the Hard Way Zed Shaw writes:
You see that self in the parameters? You know
what that is? That’s right, it’s the “extra”
parameter that Python creates so you can type
a.some_function() and then it will translate
that to really be some_function(a).
Why use self? Your function has no idea what
you are calling any one “instance” of
TheThing or another, so you just use a generic
name self that way you can write your
function and it will always work.
http://learnpythonthehardway.org/static/LearnPythonTheHardWay.pdf (p. 116)This seems to imply that the dot notation is an alternative notation. Is it possible to use Python without the dot notation?