Why do pythonistas call the current reference "self" and not "this"?
python
Solution
Smalltalk-80, released by Xerox in 1980, used `self`. Objective-C (early 1980s) layers Smalltalk features over C, so it uses `self` too. Modula-3 (1988), Python (late 1980s), and Ruby (mid 1990s) also follow this tradition.
C++, also dating from the early 1980s, chose `this` instead of `self`. Since Java was designed to be familiar to C/C++ developers, it uses `this` too.
Smalltalk uses the metaphor of objects sending messages to each other, so "self" just indicates that the object is sending a message to itself.
Problem
Python is the language I know the most, and strangely I still don't know why I'm typing "self" and not "this" like in Java or PHP. I know that Python is older than Java, but I can't figure out where does this come from. Especially since you can use any name instead of "self": the program will work fine. So where does this convention come from?