<s>[INST] What is a clean, pythonic way to have multiple constructors in Python? I can't find a definitive answer for this. AFAIK, you can't have multiple __init__ functions in a Python class. So what is a good way to solve this problem? 
Suppose I have an class called Cheese with the number_of_holes property. How can I have two ways of creating cheese-objects...

one that takes a number of holes like this: parmesan = Cheese(num_holes = 15)
and one that takes no arguments and just randomizes the number_of_holes property: gouda = Cheese()

I can think of only one way to do this, but that seems kinda clunky:
class Cheese():
    def __init__(self, num_holes = 0):
        if (num_holes == 0):
            # randomize number_of_holes
        else:
            number_of_holes = num_holes

What do you say? Is there a better way?
 [/INST] Actually None is much better for "magic" values:
class Cheese():
    def __init__(self, num_holes = None):
        if num_holes is None:
            ...

Now if you want complete freedom of adding more parameters:
class Cheese():
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        #args -- tuple of anonymous arguments
        #kwargs -- dictionary of named arguments
        self.num_holes = kwargs.get('num_holes',random_holes())

To better explain the concept of *args and **kwargs (you can actually change these names):
def f(*args, **kwargs):
   print 'args: ', args, ' kwargs: ', kwargs

>>> f('a')
args:  ('a',)  kwargs:  {}
>>> f(ar='a')
args:  ()  kwargs:  {'ar': 'a'}
>>> f(1,2,param=3)
args:  (1, 2)  kwargs:  {'param': 3}

http://docs.python.org/reference/expressions.html#calls
 </s>