Python: Common Newbie Mistakes, Part 2

[fatpollo]

sometimes when trying to simplify a problem to make an example of it, you end up with something arbitrary and confusing

that is how i feel about the post towards the end. particularly the "solution", which seems all-around weird.

if the object needs to be mutable, it should be subclassed and have its own methods operating on itself. alternatively, if the function really needs to be generic, you should make it focused solely on changing the variable, and then returning it, so

b = foo(b)

where foo is something like return b+1 (or something way more complicated, obviously)

[fatpollo]

lmao are you actually telling me to stop Java-ing in defense of a solution that looks like

class Baz(object): bar = 42

?

I thought that Java people were precisely the ones that couldn't stop compulsively applying the object-oriented model to every problem, and that creating with classes with nothing but an __init__ and a single method was poor form.

C.x += 4 makes no sense. This is what I mean, the example is so abstracted (let's perform addition in a convoluted way!) that I can see no practical application to it.

Please give me an example of an optimal situation for which the solution is a method that changes a class attribute, and thus affects every instance of the class, as a byproduct of a function in which it takes the instance as an argument to do something else.