Q: sort's key and cmp parameters

[Paul Rubin]

Raymond Hettinger <python at rcn.com> writes:
> Once Kernighan and Ritchie put C's qsort() into the food supply,
> we were doomed.

It was already too late.  Knuth vol 3 came out in 1973(?) and its
sorting half is mostly about comparison sorting. 

> FWIW, I think the standard library's unittest module is also a
> code prion -- there's no other explanation for its thriving
> despite competition from the vastly superior syntax of py.test
> or nose.

unittest is sort of a clone of JUnit if I understand correctly.
py.test and nose are obscure because they're not in the stdlib.  I
have used unittest a little bit but I mostly use doctest these days.
I have the impression that py.test and/or nose are better in some ways
but I haven't bothered checking further.