checking if a list is empty

[Prasad, Ramit]

>The audience I am concerned about is the ones who are over-educated 
>into using and having used a score of different meanings of the same
>symbols.  They will be used to their intuition being wrong when they
>move into a new context.  Being explicit will help them.

I find this argument to be flawed. Should I stop using built-in generators instead of range/xrange for looping through lists? Certainly for loops with loop counting are understood more widely than generators. Should I stop using any advanced feature Python because it is difficult to understand without knowing Python?

I do not code for absolute beginner in Python to read my code. That way lies madness! I code with the assumption that someone with intermediate knowledge can read my code (unless I am forced into optimizing and then I rely on comments to explain). Actually, that is how I attempt to code in any language.

I may not have made the point well, but I cannot see any advantage for trying to program for the lowest common denominator.


Ramit



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