I dislike excessive religion, so I don't hold to the view thateverything should be a method function. Fortunately, Python lets meindulge this view.

My rule of thumb is that any method function that doesn't use its self argument to get at things gets made into a normal module levelfunction. This reduces clutter on the class (and in the source code)and makes what's really going on clear to me and any later readers.

Of course there are some exceptions, such as:

This blog , indeed all of my web pages, have essentially noHTML 'design' as such: no stylish markup, no fancy colour schemes, nofonts, nothing. This is because I'm not a graphics designer and I'mhonest enough to admit it.

Not doing any sort of HTML design leaves things up to the browser. Icertainly hope that browsers have better designers than me working tomake their default behavior good. (And if not, it's not my fault.)Also

If you use ssh to connect to a machine and mistype your password,you'll probably have to sit through a couple of seconds of delaybefore you can try again. In theory this delay is supposed to slowdown large-scale password guessing attempts. In practice it'spointless, as anyone who is getting mass-ssh-probed can attest.

Delaying after failed login attempts started in the world of physicalterminals, where it works because the supply of physical terminals youcan try to log in on is