Non-member vs member functions in Python

Question

I\'m relatively new to Python and struggling to reconcile features of the language with habits I\'ve picked up from my background in C++ and Java.

The latest issue I\

Answer 1

Prefer non-member non-friend functions to member functions

This is a design philosophy and can and should be extended to all OOP Paradigm programming languages. If you understand the essence of this, the concept is clear

If you can do without requiring private/protected access to the members of a Class, your design do not have a reason to include the function, a member of the Class. To think this the Other way, when designing a Class, after you have enumerated all properties, you need to determine the minimal set of behaviors that would be sufficient enough to make the Class. Any member function that you can write using any of the available public methods/member functions should be made public.

How much is this applicable in Python

To some extent if you are careful. Python supports a weaker encapsulation compared to the other OOP Languages (like Java/C++) notably because there is no private members. (There is something called Private variables which a programmer can easily write by prefixing an '_' before the variable name. This becomes class private through a name mangling feature.). So if we literally adopt Scott Meyer's word totally considering there is a thin like between what should be accessed from Class and what should be from outside. It should be best left to the designer/programmer to decide whether a function should be an integral part of the Class or Not. One design principle we can easily adopt, "Unless your function required to access any of the properties of the class you can make it a non-member function".