What is the strategy for working with class variables?

[ichabod801]

__del__ is triggered when an instance is garbage collected, not the class. So I can't imagine calling it to shut down class attributes. Then those attributes would not be available for later instances.

I used class variables for two things: constants specific to the class and used across instances, and data about the instances (like a counter for how many have been created, to make unique IDs for the instances). I can't say that's all I would use them for, but that is all I've ever felt the need to use them for.