title: Why would a python class that inherits 'object' call 'super' in its __init__ method?
body: <p>I was poking around at the source of the <code>requests</code> module, and noticed <a href="https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests/blob/master/requests/models.py" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this code:</a></p>
  
  <pre><code>class Response(object):
      """The :class:`Response &lt;Response&gt;` object, which contains a
      server's response to an HTTP request.
      """
  
      def __init__(self):
          super(Response, self).__init__()
          ... more init method...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My understanding of <code>super()</code> suggests this call wouldn't do anything at all. I've found <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/576169/understanding-python-super-and-init-methods">quite</a> a few <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/753640/inheritance-and-overriding-init-in-python">questions</a> about <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2399307/python-invoke-super-constructor">superclass calling</a>, but all work from subclasses of other classes, not <code>object</code> itself. The <a href="http://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html?highlight=super#super" rel="nofollow noreferrer">python docs</a>, too, don't mention this construction.</p>
  
  <p>It occurred to me this might simply be a mistake, and if you <code>git blame</code> that file to the <a href="https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests/blob/ab27027aa8916e6e199bbb35083beb5d6339f6aa/requests/models.py" rel="nofollow noreferrer">commit that introduced that line</a>, you'll see that at the time of authorship, <code>Response</code> was a subclass of <code>BaseResponse</code>. Is the line just a holdover from a class refactoring, or does it this super() call do anything at all?</p>