What is the purpose of subclassing the class “object” in Python?

Question

All the Python built-ins are subclasses of object and I come across many user-defined classes which are too. Why? What is the purpose of the class object<

Answer 1

It has to do with the "new-style" of classes. You can read more about it here: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/classes.html#multiple-inheritance and also here: http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#new-style-and-classic-classes

Using new-style classes will allow you to use "Python's newer, versatile features like __slots__, descriptors, properties, and __getattribute__()."