I faced with one task while learning python where i had to work with bytes and get total number of differences between this two numbers

hamming_distance_hard_way.py

def Denary2Binary(list):
    '''convert denary integer n to binary string bStr'''
    result = []
    bStr = ''
    for n in list:
      print "n is %s" %n
    	if n < 0:  raise ValueError, "must be a positive integer"
    	if n == 0: return '0'
    	while n > 0:
    		bStr = str(n % 2) + bStr
    		n = n >> 1
	print "bStr is %s" %bStr
	result.append(bStr)
	bStr = ''
	print result
	return result[0],result[1]

def checkio(data):
    a,b = Denary2Binary(data)
    difference = abs(len(a)-len(b)) 
    return a,b

#These "asserts" using only for self-checking and not necessary for auto-testing
if __name__ == '__main__':
    assert checkio([117, 17]) == 3, "First example"
    assert checkio([1, 2]) == 2, "Second example"
    assert checkio([16, 15]) == 5, "Third example"