title: Sum of list with any type of items
body: <p>I'm learning python and our teacher told us to write a function that will return the sum of a list no matter what the type of its values are.</p>
  
  <p>If the list is Integers, then: <code>sum([1, 4, 5, 6]) = 16</code></p>
  
  <p>If the list is Strings, then: <code>sum(['a','b',c']) = 'abc'</code></p>
  
  <p>The list can also be made of tuples and lists inside of it.</p>
  
  <p>The code needs to be as short and simple as possible. I tried writing this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>element = list[0]
  for thing in list:
      for thingy in thing:
          element += thingy
  print element
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but it isn't working.. Any idea how to do this?</p>