Fair enough, but then what we want is readability, which is related but not equivalent to conciseness. I often have discussions with colleagues about different

Fair enough, but then what we want is readability, which is related but not equivalent to conciseness. I often have discussions with colleagues about different coding idioms in Python, and I hear often "this one is better because it is less typing". I don't think this is very valid. If everything is equal, then sure, go for less typing. But using locals() instead of explicit arguments when calling a template rendering because "it is less typing" seems not strong enough an argument to me.