The recent discussion of a proposed change to the Python language—the usual fare on the language's Ideas forum—was interesting, somewhat less for the actual feature under discussion than for the other ...

Hashing is a one-way cryptographic function while encryption is designed to work both ways. Encryption algorithms take input and a secret key and generate a random looking output called a ciphertext.

The specialness is indeed mostly because of the strong usage conventions - None is a well-known singleton, with ecosystem-wide expectations on how it should be used. Anyone who wants ...