Although I have never needed this, it just struck me that making an immutable object in Python could be slightly tricky. You can't just override __setattr__, because then you can't even set attributes in the __init__. Subclassing a tuple is a trick that works: class Immutable(tuple): def __new__(cls, a, b): return tuple.__new__(cls, (a, b)) @property def a(self): return self[0] @property def b(self): return self[1] def __str__(self): return "<Immutable {0}, {1}>".format(self.a, self.b) def __setattr__(self, *ignored): raise NotImplementedError def __delattr__(self, *ignored): raise NotImplementedError But then you have access to the a and b variables through self[0] and self[1], which is annoying. Is this possible in pure Python? If not, how would I do it with a C extension? Answers that work only in Python 3 are acceptable. Continue reading...