prefer bool() threw an exception on receiving a string, rather than act the way it does now. That breaks the truthiness cornerstone of the language. You can wr

prefer bool() threw an exception on receiving a string, rather than act the way it does now. That breaks the truthiness cornerstone of the language. You can write a = 1 # or [], (), "yo", "false", 3.2, MyFooClass(), (1,), False if a: fire_ze_missles() else: declare_peace() Upon encountering `a`, Python is evaluating bool(a). If that no longer works for strings, you now need a separate code path for determining a non-empty string. It can short-circuit the brain upon reading a word that you know means false, but the Python rules are consistent. "Empty" is False, everything else is True.