At least, readability suffers.
"".join(["a", "b"]) is a lot more intuitive than sum(["a", "b"], start="")
edit: A beautiful abstraction is the one that feels as good when it's read as when it's written.
No it isn't. The join method being on the separator string is a Pythonism that looks crazy coming from any other language.
join(xs, "") xs.join("")
At least, readability suffers.
"".join(["a", "b"]) is a lot more intuitive than sum(["a", "b"], start="")
edit: A beautiful abstraction is the one that feels as good when it's read as when it's written.