<i>Therefore, there are times when the Python developers decided to just implement something practical and simple over something that's ideologically consistent.</i><p>Which cannot be stressed enough.<p>Python acknowledges that the programmer is a human more than any other language I have seen. That's why you can get stuff done <i>and keep it maintainable</i> so easily in python. It gives you just enough rope to be very flexible, but tries very hard to not extend it to the length that people normally use to hang themselves.