> In python methods are bound implicitly in a class, but explicitly in assignment (iirc). Oh, it's quite a bit more involved than that :) I'm going to ignore

> In python methods are bound implicitly in a class, but explicitly in assignment (iirc). Oh, it's quite a bit more involved than that :) I'm going to ignore Python 2 and the C API here. In Python functions are descriptors. This means they have (mostly) a __get__ function which returns a closure passing self or cls or nothing (corresponding to a regular method, a class method and a static method; @classmethod and @staticmethod change the implementation of __get__, but of course they don't, because everything is a special case in CPython; note that "regular methods" are "regular functions" — all functions behave like methods if you treat them like one). If you write class Class: def foo(self, x): print(x) then foo is a regular old function. The magic is in the dot operator (quite literally): instance.foo is a different operator from Class.foo, and instance.foo is not Class.foo (one is a bound method the other is a plain function). The former invokes the descriptor protocol to the effect of, roughly, type(instance).__dict['foo']__.__get__(type(instance), instance), which returns a closure calling the "real foo" (Class.foo) with instance as the first argument. Similarly @classmethod has the effect of __get__ returning a different closure, which passes type(instance) as the first argument instead. Python. It's complicated®.