General question about Python design goals

[Paul Rubin]

Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> writes:
> Yes. If it's not going to be used, then there's not much point.
> Practicality beats purity, and all that.

Geez man, "practicality beats purity" only means that if maintaining
purity of something is impractical, you can judiciously let purity
slide.  It doesn't mean every slapdash kludge you can throw together
is acceptable for a widely-used distro, just because it works for the
cases you happened to think of at the moment you wrote it.

Wanting to handle the .count() parameters the same way for lists and
strings does not present any practical obstacles.  So purity is not in
conflict with practicality there.  The lack of orthogonality for that
operation is simply a wart.