Mastering Object-oriented Python

The base class object __init__() method

Fundamental to the life cycle of an object are its creation, initialization, and destruction. We'll defer creation and destruction to a later chapter on more advanced special methods and only focus on initialization for now.

The superclass of all classes, object, has a default implementation of __init__() that amounts to pass. We aren't required to implement __init__(). If we don't implement it, then no instance variables will be created when the object is created. In some cases, this default behavior is acceptable.

We can always add attributes to an object that's a subclass of the foundational base class, object. Consider the following class that requires two instance variables but doesn't initialize them: ...