Best practices

To avoid all the aforementioned problems, and until Python evolves in this field, we need to take into consideration the following points:

• Multiple inheritance should be avoided: It can be replaced with some design patterns presented in Chapter 17, Useful Design Patterns.
  • Super usage has to be consistent: In a class hierarchy, super should be used everywhere or nowhere. Mixing super and classic calls is a confusing practice. People tend to avoid super to render their code more explicit.
• Explicitly inherit from an object in Python 3 if you target Python 2 too: Classes without any ancestor specified are recognized as old-style classes in Python 2. Mixing old-style classes with new-style classes should be avoided in Python 2.
• Class hierarchy has to be looked over when a parent class method is called: To avoid any problems, every time a parent class method is called, a quick glance at the MRO  involved (with __mro__) is necessary.

Let's take a look at the access patterns for advanced attributes.