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Python Object-Oriented Python Instant Objects Your first method

Posted by jp28
jp28
3,413 Points

Everything should be working, but is not....

The code should be working but treehouse is telling that there's a mising 'self' in the praise method

first_class.py 
class Student:
    name = "Nico"

    def praise(self):
        print ("You're doing a great job, {}!".format(self))


nick = Student()
nick.praise()

1 Answer

Jennifer Nordell
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STAFF
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher
Jennifer Nordell
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

Hi there! You're doing great, but there's a couple of things going on here. Unfortunately, the Bummer! message you're getting for this is a bit misleading. The first problem is that you're printing the string, but the challenge asks you to return the string. Also, you did include self as a parameter, but you're trying to format the string with self instead of the name property of self. Take a look:

    def praise(self):
        return "You're doing a great job, {}!".format(self.name)

Here we have the praise method which takes an argument of self. We return the string with a placeholder and format the placeholder with the value stored in the self.name property.

Also, the challenge does not ask you to create any instances of this class, nor call the method on this class. Treehouse is going to do that part for you. Hint :bulb: : Challenges can be very strict and it's a good idea to try not to do anything that isn't explicitly asked for. Even if functional, it can cause the challenge to fail.

Hope this helps! :sparkles:

jp28
jp28
3,413 Points

Thank you!!! I'll be more carefull the instructions...

Clifford Gagliardo
Clifford Gagliardo
Courses Plus Student 15,069 Points

I don't understand why we have to use self.name and not just .format(name)

Jennifer Nordell
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.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher
Jennifer Nordell
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

Hi, Clifford Gagliardo! I also had a hard time wrapping my head around this at first. I'm going to show you a slightly more complex example, but I feel like it helps clarify what "self" actually does. This concept didn't start becoming more clear to me until I had examples that had multiple instances of the same object. I think you and I can agree that we are both students of Treehouse and we do share some characteristics, but we are both unique. Take a look at the example I made:

class Student:
  name = ""

  def __init__(self, name):
      self.name = name

  def praise(self):
        print ("You're doing a great job, {}!".format(self.name))

  def greet(self, other):
        print("Hi there, {}! My name is {}.".format(other.name, self.name))

me = Student("Jennifer")
you = Student("Clifford")

me.greet(you)  #I greet you
you.greet(me)  #You greet me back

In this example name is a property of the Student class. In fact, it's the only property at all. If this were a real world scenario we'd likely expect the student to have an ID (because there could be more than one John Smith, after all), and a lot of other generic information about the student.

In the lines where I define me and you, I'm creating an instance of that class. You are one student and I'm another. We have different names. I made a separate method that takes an instance of itself and an instance of another student. So we can say hello to each other! :smiley:

I feel like this might become more obvious when you see two separate instances of the same class used in conjunction.

Hope this helps! :sparkles:

The two lines printed will be:

Hi there, Clifford! My name is Jennifer. Hi there, Jennifer! My name is Clifford.