[mwhooker]

this is useless. In the python interface they are obviously lists. Is the author arguing that cpython implements them as C arrays? I don't know because the terms weren't defined.

If the author believes clarity will arise from pedantry, maybe he should start with wikipedia

> In computer science, a list or sequence is an abstract data type that implements a finite ordered collection of values, where the same value may occur more than once.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_(abstract_data_type)

[unwind]

I was about to post something very similiar.

There's nothing uniquely strange about Python's list type being backed by an array: that is even given its own type in Java (ArrayList: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/ArrayList... which implements List<> so it "is" a list).

I think the perhaps weirdest thing about Python's list API is that it supports indexing, which is rarely done on linked lists due to the cost involved. In Python I got the feeling that it's known/expected that indexing is fast.

[jplayer01]

Well, he seems to be complaining about exactly that, "Python lists aren't lists because they're implemented internally as arrays". I agree that this article is pointless.