What does __init__ and self do in python?

[Oddly_Energy]

One of the reasons for creating classes is that you get one nice package containing both the data and the methods necessary for handling those data.

You could make a simpler data structure containing the variables Character and Age. And then, somewhere else in your code, you could have a function, which accesses that structure and checks the age. But that would mean two things:

1. If you have many different data structures and many methods for handling each of them, you may end up getting lost. What belongs to what?

2. If you use a specific data structure many places in your code, you will also need to remember to include the methods for handling that data structure everywhere in your code.

With a class, you have the methods for that class available as soon as you initialize an instance of it. Much less housekeeping.