Why are Python's 'private' methods not actually private?

Question

Python gives us the ability to create \'private\' methods and variables within a class by prepending double underscores to the name, like this: __myPrivateMethod()

Answer 1

Similar behavior exists when module attribute names begin with a single underscore (e.g. _foo).

Module attributes named as such will not be copied into an importing module when using the from* method, e.g.:

from bar import *

However, this is a convention and not a language constraint. These are not private attributes; they can be referenced and manipulated by any importer. Some argue that because of this, Python can not implement true encapsulation.