Use pop() instead of del in the Lists lesson? about python-novice-gapminder HOT 7 OPEN

Note: a change was made in the python-novice-inflammation lesson a few years ago to teach pop instead of del.

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I think this is a quite reasonable suggestion, especially as the novice-inflammation lesson articulates well, staying consistent with list operations and methods as opposed to introducing a new language construct.

I think a PR would be welcome, thanks for raising the issue! Thoughts from others & @vahtras ?

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After a bit of googling I seem to understand that pop and del have the same computational complexity, and in fact pop is a wrapper around del. Therefore, we must not make it a question of runtime.

I would tend to agree that pop is more elegant because it's a method of the list class.
On the other hand, del works with multiple elements (e.g. del lst[2:5]).

I don't have a strong preference either.

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I think this StackOverflow post articulates well the differences between the two and I like the answer as well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24547223/is-del-or-pop-preferred-when-removing-elements-from-dicts

del makes it clear you are only interested in removing the thing from the list. Use pop when you care about using the thing you are removing from the list (that you are treating as a stack). So... that probably still doesn't bring clarity as to whether we should teach one or the other. Maybe both?? 👀

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Personally, I never use pop.

del should definitely be taught somewhere in the lesson. Is it explained anywhere else? I wouldn't remove it from here unless it is.

If somebody wants to add pop alongside I have no problem with it.

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I can confirm this is the only place where del is explained. I would welcome adding a bit more explanation about it (e.g. in the earlier episode on variables, explain that you can delete a variable; or simply add a passing mention here in the lists episode, saying that it can be used on any variable).

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