Why do pythonistas call the current reference “self” and not “this”?

Question

Python is the language I know the most, and strangely I still don\'t know why I\'m typing \"self\" and not \"this\" like in Java or PHP.

I know that Python is older

Answer 1

Check the history of Python for user defined classes:

Instead, one simply defines a function whose first argument corresponds to the instance, which by convention is named "self." For example:

def spam(self,y):
    print self.x, y

This approach resembles something I had seen in Modula-3, which had already provided me with the syntax for import and exception handling.

It's a choice as good as any other. You might ask why C++, Java, and C# chose "this" just as easily.