I don't know this. And I don't care. I don't self-identify as anything near a "Python programmer" and yet I've written, modified, read, and debugged (and put into production at times), let's say 100's of thousands of lines of Python since the late 90s. Not a ton, perhaps, but I certainly feel qualified to write it.

I'm forced to maintain (or deploy) other people's Python code all the time. Personally, I would rarely choose it for a team project I have to maintain (if the choice is mine) because I've seen most teams commit the same annoying type errors over and over in every dynamic language I've ever used, including epecially Python. I've worked with much more competent Python programmers than myself who still do this.

But if I was on your team, I wouldn't complain and my code would be somewhere between pretty good to great. I would help the team ship that Python and ship it well.

I'm not sure what this rant says more about: me or this 'range vs xrange' question?