Well, sorta. In practice people don't use one line statements and it's considered unpythonic. So much so I forgot it was even possible, so you're right, I was w

Well, sorta. In practice people don't use one line statements and it's considered unpythonic. So much so I forgot it was even possible, so you're right, I was wrong. Black converts it to a multiline statement. Also, the Ruby syntax for them is better because it makes it clear it isn't a mistake. launch_nuclear_weapons if at_total_war Just reads better because it doesn't look like a mistaken if statement. By conditional assignment, I meant more something like this: some_var ||= 45 And I know I can do either: some_var = some_var or 45 some_var = some_var if some_var else 45 But it just looks stupid and it is such a frequent need due to the way default args work for things like dicts, that it gets annoying.