What is the actual use of self in init in python?

Question

class Time:
    def __init__(self, hours, minutes):
        self.hours = hours      # why do i need to write these steps?
        self.minutes = minutes

Answer 1

self represents the instance of the class.

Therefore, using self.hours and self.minutes you can set the instance attributes of the object of class Time.

Answer 2

Imagine you have:

class MyClass:
   def __init__(self, arg1):
      self.argument1 = arg1
   def print_1(self):
      print(self.argument1)

When you create a class like this, the self points to an instance.

instance1 = MyClass("hello")
instance2 = MyClass("bye")

Doing print(instance1.print_1() will print "hello", and print(instance2.print_1() will print "bye"

So, self is a way to differentiate and manage multiple instances of the same class. And different instances will have its own set of different variables.

Answer 3

init is the instance of your class. When a class is called this method will be invoked first with the relevant arguments needs to be passed. self.minutes = minutes you are storing the minutes parameter to a new class variable reference called self.minutes. By convention we use self as the first parameter.