Help understanding the decisions *behind* python?

[Anthony Tolle]

On Jul 20, 12:27 pm, Phillip B Oldham <phillip.old... at gmail.com>
wrote:
> ...
> Specifically the "differences" between lists and tuples have us
> confused and have caused many "discussions" in the office. We
> understand that lists are mutable and tuples are not, but we're a
> little lost as to why the two were kept separate from the start. They
> both perform a very similar job as far as we can tell.
> ...

There's no hard-set rules, but tuples are typically used to hold
collections of heterogeneous data, e.g. (10, "spam", 3.21).  As has
been mentioned, such a tuple can be used as a dictionary key, whereas
a list cannot be used as a dictionary key, because it is mutable.

Lists, on the other hand, typically hold collections of homogeneous
data, e.g. [1, 2, 5] or ["spam", "eggs", "sausage"].

Of course, you'll also see plenty of examples of tuples containing
homogeneous data and lists containing heterogeneous data :)