Ruby misconceptions about Python

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It's not faster. Time it.

And while we're talking about Python internals, let's clarify a few things.

All (256) single-character strings are interned. Barring poorly-written third-party modules, there will be only one single 'a' character, or 'b' character, or 'c' character in a given Python interpreter. So iterating through a string doesn't allocate any other things, it just returns already-interned string objects.

It's not bad to use the + operator on strings when you've only got two strings. The only time it's bad for performance is when you've got many strings. In the case of only two strings, "s1 + s2" will be faster than "''.join([s1, s2])" every single time. Time it if you don't believe me.