Empty objects

Let's start with the most basic Python built-in, one that we've seen many times already, the one that we've extended in every class we have created: the object. Technically, we can instantiate an object without writing a subclass:

>>> o = object()
>>> o.x = 5
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'object' object has no attribute 'x'

Unfortunately, as you can see, it's not possible to set any attributes on an object that was instantiated directly. This isn't because the Python developers wanted to force us to write our own classes, or anything so sinister. No, they simply wanted to save memory; a lot of memory. When Python allows an object to have arbitrary attributes, it takes a certain amount of system memory to keep track of what attributes each object has, for storing both the attribute name and its value. Even if no attributes are stored, a certain amount of memory is allocated for potential...