len and __len__ may have made sense when they were first implemented, I do not disagree. Having tutored students learning python as their first experience prog

len and __len__ may have made sense when they were first implemented, I do not disagree. Having tutored students learning python as their first experience programming, I recall that it was confusing that len was a function which merely calls a method on its argument. They wanted to know when they should write their own functions in a similar style. I looked into it, and the best answer I came up with was that len is an historical artifact. If it were designed with the capabilities of modern Python, then there would be no good reason for doing it that way that I can find. Please correct me if I'm wrong. The article as a whole is quite good. Its arguments in favor of len being a builtin function are quite bad. I've noticed this as something of a pattern in the Python community that I'm speaking out against. It's ok for there to be things in a project the size and age of Python that are historical artifacts. Python is certainly far and away better in this regard than its sibling languages. Defending them as good design is counterproductive. I don't want newly designed languages to ape the mistakes of the old.