to see python at work in more substantial examples than much of the rest of the book was able to provide for nowlet' move on to our final class-related topic the super built-in functionfor better or worseso fari've mentioned python' super built-in function only briefly in passing because it is relatively uncommon and may even be controversial to use given this call' increased visibility in recent yearsthoughit merits some further elaboration in this edition besides introducing superthis section also serves as language design case study to close out on so many tools whose presence may to some seem curious in scripting language like python some of this section calls this proliferation of tools into questionand encourage you to judge any subjective content here for yourself (and we'll return to such things at the end of this book after we've expanded on other advanced tools such as metaclasses and descriptorsstillpython' rapid growth rate in recent years represents strategic decision point for its community going forwardand super seems as good representative example as any the great super debate as noted in and python has super built-in function that can be used to invoke superclass methods genericallybut was deferred until this point of the book this was deliberate--because super has substantial downsides in typical codeand sole use case that seems obscure and complex to many observersmost beginners are better served by the traditional explicit-name call scheme used so far see the sidebar "what about super?on page in for brief summary of the rationale for this policy the python community itself seems split on this subjectwith online articles about it running the gamut from "python' super considered harmfulto "python' super(considered super!" franklyin my live classes this call seems to be most often of interest to java programmers starting to use python anewbecause of its conceptual similarity to tool in that language (many new python feature ultimately owes its existence to programmers of other languages bringing their old habits to new modelpython' super is not java' --it translates differently to python' multiple inheritanceand has both are opinion pieces in partbut are suggested reading the first was eventually retitled "python' super is niftybut you can' use it,and is today at its subjective tone--the second article ("python' super(considered super!"alone somehow found its way into python' official library manualsee its link in the manual' super section and consider demanding that differing opinions be represented more evenly in your toolsdocumentationor omitted altogether python' manuals are not the place for personal opinion and one-sided propagandathe super built-in functionfor better or worse