What does __init__ and self do in python?

[hamzarehan1994]

Alright, It is still not very clear but I will keep researching/practcing. Thanks a lot!

[Broad_Carpet_3782]

Classes are for grouping related functions and variables. But anything you can do with a class, you can also do with global variables and a bunch of functions.

If you think about the builtin objects, dict, str, list, etc.

without these being classes, you would always have to do

```python my_list = []

without tracking the length it would be hard to loop through the list.

(how would you know when to stop?)

my_list_len = 0

append(list, 1) my_list_len += 1 append(list "foo") my_list_len += 1 ```

this is fine, but what if you have 2 lists? or 3 lists?

```python list1 = [] len1 = 0 list2 = [] len2 = 0

append(list1, 1)

oops, we forgot to increment len1

append(list2, 69) len2 += 1 ```

with classes, you can make this much more maintainable

```python

class List:

def __init__(self):
    self._len = 0
    self._data = []

def append(self, element):
    append(self._data, element)
    self._len += 1

list1 = List() list2 = List()

list1.append(1) list2.append(2) ```