[BossingAround]

To expand on the article from my personal experience, sometimes, there's a very thin line between "clever code" as in "overengineered", and "clever code" as in "I don't understand it, so I don't like it".

Imagine situation where a team of Java developers need to create a component in Python. No problem!

We come to the following code:

```

list_of_resources = method_a()

if not list_of_resources:

  handle_empty_list()

```

Now, is the code above "clever", or not? As Java developers, you could get into arguments like "we should use `len(list_of_resources) == 0` instead" vs "it's not Pythonic and there's no reason to use len instead truth/falsey-ness".

Of course, the whole problem gets exacerbated by unit testing, where `list_of_resources` can be a MagicMock, and therefore `if not list_of_resources` will never trigger.

Of course, probably nobody will argue that the above snipped of code is overengineered. But, somehow, the same logic of "clever code bites you back" applies to more situations than just insane class hierarchies. And it's those very tiny fragments that seems so simple yet there are hidden issues that I find the most interesting to focus on.

[chasd00]

> you could get into arguments like "we should use `len(list_of_resources) == 0` instead" vs "it's not Pythonic and there's no reason to use len instead truth/falsey-ness".

these kinds or arguments trigger me so badly i should probably talk to a therapist. I've been involved in a couple and it usually ends, rightly or wrongly, with me pulling rank and saying this is what it's going to be, this is what it's always going to be, move on to bigger things or gtfo of my team.

[otikik]

> the whole problem gets exacerbated by unit testing, where `list_of_resources` can be a MagicMock, and therefore `if not list_of_resources` will never trigger

Not a python or javascript programmer, but that alone already points at using `len` as a better (more testable) solution.

In my limited understanding of python, there's no type-checker that will shout if someone in another team changes method_a() to sometimes return a `None` or `False` in addition to a List. So even if in python empty lists are falsy, the code will be a bit more robust if it doesn't rely on that feature to begin with. The code will error on the if instead of continuing and trying to use a `None` in a place where a list is expected later on.

Disclaimer: I work with a language with only two falsy values (nil and false), so I might be biased