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Comment by dec0dedab0de | Hacker News Reader

I love Python, but I have to agree on this one.

In many cases, this invocation of fun_call() would not match its definition signature and it would generate an exception. When that's the case it's not at all a Python gotcha because it halted and forced you to fix the error.

I like this string catenation behavior and I prefer it, even if it causes some confusion in (IMO rare) cases.

I mean, this one is solvable by not using magic constants. Pretty easy to avoid. Can also lint it.

I don't get what you're saying. How is it possible to write code without string literals?

    subprocess.check_call([
      "/usr/bin/env",
      "echo"
      "hello world"
    ])

I think she meant to not pass the strings but assign them to constants and then pass those.

Yep! But, like I mentioned, linter can catch this too.

he probably meant not using string literals / ints outside of top-level declarations, so you would instead assign all these parameters to "constants" at top level and then use those constants in function calls, hence avoiding this error.

Unless I'm using a string more than once or its meaning is unclear, I always use the literal. In most cases, I find it more legible than having to go look up a constant's definition.

Then yes, I rely on the linter and testing.

How often do people write production software that doesn't have string literals?

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