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Trond Andersen: I talked with someone looking at Ruby to use for a prototype and didn't want Java's verbose syntax and complex APIs. I suggested Python as a good alternative since it got better support for GTK than Ruby and RedHat and others uses the language alot, but it seemed like they had rejected Python as an alternative for such a relative large prototype. I just had to ask why. So he fired up the console on his Mac and typed:

...

Try it !!!! It wasn't quite what I've expected.

Go figure.....

Here's what I got when I tried:

[weiqi@gao] $ python
Python 2.3.4 (#1, Feb  2 2005, 12:11:53)
[GCC 3.4.2 20041017 (Red Hat 3.4.2-6.fc3)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
>>> class foo:
...   def __init__(self, x=[]):
...     self.y = x
... 
>>> a = foo()
>>> a.y.append("123456")
>>> a.y
['123456']
>>> b = foo()
>>> b.y
['123456']
>>> a.y.append("98765")
>>> a.y
['123456', '98765']
>>> b.y
['123456', '98765']

The explanation is here.