Not sure how explicit self breaks strings? You've lost me on the way I'm afraid.
If we're quoting Reddit comments at each other:
> You may be used to a different kind of magic. Perhaps the magic of a variable called this appearing inside your method, or the magic in which an un-prefixed variable name somevar is sometimes a local but at other times a member variable this.somevar. So it may take a little time to get used to Python's style, but isn't it only because you are used to the other magic?
Explicit self is hardly a burden after about 10 minutes of learning Python, and there's really little objective argument to be made in favour of or against it as opposed to everything else.
You quoted JavaScript as 'not needing it' before, and dear God, JS is the worst of all languages to reference, given how the this keyword is a calling context, which every man and his framework takes liberties with.