This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I haven't read the article. But I'd assume this is for the same reason that not not string is faster than bool(string). Which is to say that it has to do with having to look up a global function rather than a known keyword.
Could also compare against:
if not len(mylist)
That way this version isn’t evaluating two functions. The bool evaluation of an integer is false when zero, otherwise true.
That's worse. IMO, solve this problem with two things:
mylist as list | None or just listif not mylist:The first documents intent and gives you static analysis tools some context to check for type consistency/compatibility, and the second shows that None vs empty isn't an important distinction here.
This is honestly the worst version regarding readability. Don't rely on implicit coercion, people.