 <p>Python has limited support for private identifiers, through a feature that automatically prepends the class name to any identifiers starting with two underscores. This is transparent to the programmer, for the most part, but the net effect is that any variables named this way can be used as private variables.</p> <p>See <a href="http://docs.python.org/tutorial/classes.html#private-variables" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> for more on that.</p> <p>In general, Python's implementation of object orientation is a bit primitive compared to other languages. But I enjoy this, actually. It's a very conceptually simple implementation and fits well with the dynamic style of the language.</p>