checking if a list is empty

[Hans Georg Schaathun]

On 11 May 2011 16:26:40 GMT, Steven D'Aprano
  <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
: > 1. My concern was not about clueless newbies.  They need to
: >   learn.  My concern is about experienced scientists and engineers who
: >   are simply new to python.
: 
:  Which makes them clueless newbies *about Python*. I don't care how 
:  experienced they are in astrophysics or biology or calculating the 
:  average airspeed of an unladen swallow.

Someone who knows how to program is never clueless starting a new
language.  Newbie, may be, but he knows most of the constructions
and semantic principles to look for; most of it is learning the syntax.

:  Yeah, life is hard and then you die, and scientists don't even get paid 
:  that much. So what? Do physicists write their scientific papers about 
:  string theory with the thought "What if some Python programmer who knows 
:  nothing about string theory is reading this? I better dumb it down."

That depends on the purpose of that particular paper, but the real 
question is, who writes the software to test that string theory 
empirically?  Please tell.

-- 
:-- Hans Georg