Python, creating objects

class Student(object):
    name = ""
    age = 0
    major = ""

    # The class "constructor" - It's actually an initializer 
    def __init__(self, name, age, major):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age
        self.major = major

def make_student(name, age, major):
    student = Student(name, age, major)
    return student

Note that even though one of the principles in Python's philosophy is "there should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it", there are still multiple ways to do this. You can also use the two following snippets of code to take advantage of Python's dynamic capabilities:

class Student(object):
    name = ""
    age = 0
    major = ""

def make_student(name, age, major):
    student = Student()
    student.name = name
    student.age = age
    student.major = major
    # Note: I didn't need to create a variable in the class definition before doing this.
    student.gpa = float(4.0)
    return student

I prefer the former, but there are instances where the latter can be useful – one being when working with document databases like MongoDB.

Create a class and give it an __init__ method:

class Student:
    def __init__(self, name, age, major):
        self.name = name
        self.age = age
        self.major = major

    def is_old(self):
        return self.age > 100

Now, you can initialize an instance of the Student class:

>>> s = Student('John', 88, None)
>>> s.name
    'John'
>>> s.age
    88

Although I'm not sure why you need a make_student student function if it does the same thing as Student.__init__.