Why are Python's 'private' methods not actually private?

Question

Python gives us the ability to create \'private\' methods and variables within a class by prepending double underscores to the name, like this: __myPrivateMethod()

Answer 1

With Python 3.4 this is the behaviour:

>>> class Foo:
        def __init__(self):
                pass
        def __privateMethod(self):
                return 3
        def invoke(self):
                return self.__privateMethod()


>>> help(Foo)
Help on class Foo in module __main__:

class Foo(builtins.object)
 |  Methods defined here:
 |
 |  __init__(self)
 |
 |  invoke(self)
 |
 |  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 |  Data descriptors defined here:
 |
 |  __dict__
 |      dictionary for instance variables (if defined)
 |
 |  __weakref__
 |      list of weak references to the object (if defined)

 >>> f = Foo()
 >>> f.invoke()
 3
 >>> f.__privateMethod()
 Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "", line 1, in 
     f.__privateMethod()
 AttributeError: 'Foo' object has no attribute '__privateMethod'

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/classes.html#tut-private

Note that the mangling rules are designed mostly to avoid accidents; it still is possible to access or modify a variable that is considered private. This can even be useful in special circumstances, such as in the debugger.

Even if the question is old I hope my snippet could be helpful.