Why do attributes classes also have super().__init__() funcs?

Hi, Michal- I was wondering the same thing. Perhaps by me posting this, it will bring your question up in the queue again and someone more knowledgeable can answer it definitively for us. But I'll try to answer you question based on what I've learned after some research:

1) even though Sneaky and Agile both do not explicitly define a parent or super class, they both have one... it's called "object". To my knowledge, everything in Python goes back to a built-in object class. If it didn't, using "super().[etc]" inside either class would result in an error when used.

-->fyi, technically, you don't have to use "super()" if you want to call a parent's methods inside a child's class.... You can just use the parent's class name. Say a class named Word was a child of a class named Letter. Instead of writing "super().init([arguments])" in Word class, you could write "Letter.init(self, [arguments])" Note the use of "self" in the latter. A reason why "super()" is favored more than the latter example is that it makes the child class more dynamic (ex. what if you changed Letter or the inheritance hierarchy? You'd have to change the reference in the child class.) By using super(), I guess your code is not as 'tightly coupled' as Kenneth talks about.

2) In multiple inheritance (vs. single inheritance), super() is not just a link to a child's parent... it's a link to the child's entire family tree. So the MRO (method resolution order) of the Thief() class is: Thief, Sneaky, Agile, Character, [object]. From nearest in relationship to furthest away. So, if you typed in "thief1 = Thief(name='badguy', weapon='gun'), then Python passes these parameters to the Thief's init function first, then it goes to Sneaky, then to Agile, then to Character, then to object. At the end of all this, we want thief1.name = 'badguy' and thief1.weapon = 'gun'. But notice, in our example, based on the code shown in the video, .name doesn't get assigned until python gets to the Character class. And while we've made no mention of .weapon, the Character class takes care of this as well with our handy kwargs.items() and setattr code... which is great because no parameter should get to the object class (because it's init doesn't take any arguments, I think) or an error is thrown.

-->BUT, Character will never get a chance to assign .name and .weapon properly if the respective parameters do not pass through Thief, Sneaky and Agile first. That is why each of these three classes has a **kwargs argument AND why each of these classes use super()... even Sneaky and Agile. If Sneaky and Agile didn't use super() then your parameters could not continue down the chain to Character... which is why if you took out the super() reference in Sneaky or Agile, your code will throw an error.

So the kwargs dictionary we create and pack (with name='badguy' and weapon='gun'), flows in to the first class in the MRO, and that class takes any applicable parameters out of that dictionary via its init function if applicable, then effectively passes what remains of kwargs (using the "super().init" bit of code) to the next class in the MRO for that class's init function, and so on. By the time kwargs gets to the object class, it's empty, which is why an error is not thrown.

Anyway, that's my take on the video's code example using multiple inheritance and my attempt to answer your question... until someone more knowledgeable tells me differently : ) Hope this helps! D.