The function essentially does two things:
1. it applies a prefix - the first argument - to the given urls. In no
   instance a prefix was given
2. it calls url() for simple tuple or list elements in the given iterable.
   Cases where such a tuple or list was passed to patterns have been
   replaced by direct calls to url()

2 allowed for both calls to url() and simple tuples to be listed in
get_urls() and similar places. This allowed for unnecessary variation.
Always calling url() makes the url lists look less noisy and more uniform,
allowing the reader to focus on the actual differences of the urls instead
of superfluities.

django.conf.urls.patterns will also undergo deprecation starting from
Django 1.8. This commit anticipates that change.

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/1.8/#django-conf-urls-patterns