Every object in Maya is actually a ‘Node’, you can view this inside the Node Editor.
Every node (or object) has several attributes that we can edit:
We can access the attributes using the attribute name (polyCube1.rotate) but on the node they appear as something called ‘Plugs’:
Plugs can have values set on them, and that’s what we’ll often be doing with scripts, in the example below a value of 10 has been applied to a plug (or input), this represents applying a value to an attribute.
We can also create connections between 1 node’s plug and another’s:
This is how most (if not all objects) within Maya interact with each other.