00:12:32.937,00:12:35.937
Matt Niznik: If you've used classes in other languages, __init__ is similar to the concept of a constructor for a class

00:13:52.849,00:13:55.849
Matt Niznik: Similarly, self is similar to the concept of "this" in other languages

00:14:15.593,00:14:18.593
Greg Stumpf - NOAA Affiliate: Can you have multiple __init__ functions (i.e. constructors)?

00:14:29.907,00:14:32.907
Matt Niznik: Great question, let me look

00:14:48.484,00:14:51.484
Alan Brammer - NOAA Affiliate: no, __init__ is called once when you create the object.  __init__ can call internal methods though  

00:15:21.464,00:15:24.464
Matt Niznik: It looks like the preferred way in Python would be assigning a default to some of the parameters in init and branching within init based on what the user passes

00:16:08.320,00:16:11.320
Matt Niznik: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/682504/what-is-a-clean-pythonic-way-to-have-multiple-constructors-in-python

00:16:25.517,00:16:28.517
Greg Stumpf - NOAA Affiliate: Multiple constructors in Java require that each constructor has a different set of parameters.  Nothing like that in Python?

00:16:28.380,00:16:31.380
Alan Brammer - NOAA Affiliate: yeah, doing "work" in the __init__ is controversial.  but in reality it's just a function that returns the object, so can do anything any other code would do.

00:17:49.882,00:17:52.882
Matt Niznik: @Greg the closest thing I saw is defining multiple methods in the class that call init differently, but that's probably controversial too

00:18:16.024,00:18:19.024
Alan Brammer - NOAA Affiliate: ahh yeah.  I think that gets into FactoryMethods and AbstractBaseClasses.  They're there and possible, likely out of the scope of this course.  It gets messy quick

00:18:54.310,00:18:57.310
Matt Niznik: Java and Python tend to be on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of "strictness"

00:21:19.760,00:21:22.760
Matt Niznik: As an aside, I've always found "self" being the first param for a class method to be counterintuitive.

00:22:49.830,00:22:52.830
Greg Stumpf - NOAA Affiliate: I found this re: multiple constructors:  https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-a-clean-pythonic-way-to-have-multiple-constructors-in-python/

00:25:08.489,00:25:11.489
Matt Niznik: Yeah, that's probably the most reasonable way to do it if you really have to

00:26:14.467,00:26:17.467
Greg Stumpf - NOAA Affiliate: They are very common in Java

00:26:35.507,00:26:38.507
Matt Niznik: I remember 😀