Docstrings are (generally)available at the runtime, comments aren't: they are bypassed early in the parsing. They are completely different beasts (in python like in other languages).
I understand that they are different technically, but given that the performance implications are going to be nil for most people and docstrings have a similar function as comments, is it really necessary to be on such a high horse over something so minor?
Strings are not intended to act as comments. Docstrings are intended to act as docstrings. If you need inline comments beyond what is in your docstrings, there is no reason not to use Python's comment character as designed.
It's tangential to the original discussion, but that attitude nearly turned me off of Python entirely when I was first starting. I'd pop onto IRC or a discussion community and ask a question about something, explaining that I was new and the most common responses were:
1. Read the docs and figure it out yourself.
2. Why are you doing X? Only an intellectually feeble person would do X -- normal people do Y.
3. That's a waste of time and I'm not going to tell you how to do it because X, Y, and Z.
