Albert van der Horst wrote: > I agree that it is a useful function and that it is doing > the right thing. What is wrong is the name. > I refer to the fact that it is not returning the maximum. > It returns the iterator value that leads to the maximum. > A function that doesn't return a maximum shouldn't be called > maximum.
But a maximum is often ambiguous. What is max(people), the oldest, tallest, or richest person? The key argument is a convenient way to disambiguate. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
