Much Ado About None
summary
History traces zero from Babylonian placeholders, Mayan base‑20 digits and Brahmagupta (650 CE) to Fibonacci (1202) introducing the Hindu zero to Europe; computing picks it up as Tony Hoare’s 1966 billion-dollar mistake null pointer. Python’s None is a single immutable NoneType object (singleton): every None shares the same id, occupies ~16 bytes, is falsy but not boolean, cannot be reassigned, and calling None errors. Examples show functions using pass, print, implicit return and explicit return None; mypy flags assigning 5 to a variable annotated as None.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Concept of nothing
- 1:24Zero in mathematics
- 3:30Nothingness roots
- 8:31Billion-dollar mistake
- 10:35Python’s None object
- 17:35None as singleton
- 19:26Q&A
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