Lots of good explanations; here's my take: always feed in the enclosure unless (a) there is an actually existing and important reason not to, and (b) if there is such a reason, all the simplest/least stressful fixes have been thoroughly tried.
The 'reading their body language' comment needs a lot of stars -- that's such an underappreciated part of herp keeping (especially ball pythons, which are pretty open with their "feelings" compared to other snake species).
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