Question

What’s the difference between:

class Child(SomeBaseClass):     def __init__(self):         super(Child, self).__init__() 

and:

class Child(SomeBaseClass):     def __init__(self):         SomeBaseClass.__init__(self) 

I’ve seen super being used quite a lot in classes with only single inheritance. I can see why you’d use it in multiple inheritance but am unclear as to what the advantages are of using it in this kind of situation.

---

_{This question is about technical implementation details and the distinction between different ways of accessing the base class __init__ method. To close duplicate questions where OP is simply missing a super call and is asking why base class attributes aren’t available, please use Why don't my subclass instances contain the attributes from the base class (causing an AttributeError when I try to use them)? instead.}

Answer 1

The benefits of super() in single-inheritance are minimal — mostly, you don’t have to hard-code the name of the base class into every method that uses its parent methods.

However, it’s almost impossible to use multiple-inheritance without super(). This includes common idioms like mixins, interfaces, abstract classes, etc. This extends to code that later extends yours. If somebody later wanted to write a class that extended Child and a mixin, their code would not work properly.