But this is largely a comment disguised as a variable name, and is no more or less likely to stay up-to-date as a comment. If the Dell Identifier were to ever

But this is largely a comment disguised as a variable name, and is no more or less likely to stay up-to-date as a comment. If the Dell Identifier were to ever be changed to "DuplicateAssets", you're just as likely to have sillyMisspelledDellSOAPIdentifier = "DuplicateAssets" as the original might have if i["DuplicateAssets"] is not None: # Not a typo... And your method replaces one line of code with two. Comments have problems, but they solve problems too. They're not evil.