It's hard for me to imagine that situation coming up, but yes, __slots__ does indeed have a purpose. BTW, have you considered using the complex type to handle

It's hard for me to imagine that situation coming up, but yes, __slots__ does indeed have a purpose. BTW, have you considered using the complex type to handle that for you? It's 2d and ints should be safe in float representation. If it overflows it'll crash nicely.