Question

Reading the documentation I came across the following paragraph:

A scope defines the visibility of a name within a block. If a local
variable is defined in a block, its scope includes that block. If the
definition occurs in a function block, the scope extends to any blocks
contained within the defining one, unless a contained block introduces
a different binding for the name. The scope of names defined in a
class block is limited to the class block; it does not extend to the
code blocks of methods – this includes comprehensions and generator
expressions since they are implemented using a function scope.

I decided to try accessing class variable from a method myself:

>>> class A():
    i = 1
    def f(self):
        print(i)            

>>> a = A()

>>> a.i
1

>>> a.f()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#7>", line 1, in <module>
    a.f()
  File "<pyshell#4>", line 4, in f
    print(i)
NameError: global name 'i' is not defined

I know that the variable i may be accessed by explicitly pointing to the class name A.i:

>>> a = A()
>>> class A():
    i = 1
    def f(self):
        print(A.i)          
>>> a = A()
>>> a.f()
1

The question is why the developers of the language made class variables not visible from methods? What is the rationale behind it?

Answer 1

This seems to be related to the use of an explicit self parameter, and the requirement that all method calls and instance attribute accesses explicitly use self. It would be at least strange if the uncommon case of accessing a class scope function as a normal function would be much easier than the common case of accessing it as a method via self. Class variables are usually also accessed via the instance in Python.

In C++, in contrast, the class scope is visibile in all methods, but calling a method implicitly passes this. This seems to be the other sane choice.