module obj is instance of types.ModuleType, which is instance of 'type', where class obj is instance of 'type'. even only at this point, they're diff in to many ways. there are so many things to do when you truly want module to replace class, as pointed by 2 posts above
i'm also a beginner, so i can offer you a tip in learning it: follow the design, py usually has good reasons about it, i've lost in every challenge i put against py design, luckily i find the reasons through my own experiment. yes, it's better to find it through hacking, rather than people talking about it, the reason is the same as coding to learn programming, not only reading book. it will become more understandable when people say py has clean design as for 'self', yes i admit it seems troublesome at first, you'll have reason for it once you know that method is simply a func, you'll embrace the more general design (py requires you to specify a name for the caller) when you learn about metaclass. a nice argument to this is that human beings are visual creatures, it becomes so much easier to have a name that desribes the obj it points to (like 'self', 'cls', 'metacls') than implicit name that trying to be as general as possible (like 'this') -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
