June
26th,
2015
The Zen of Python, by TimPeters:
- Beautiful is better than ugly.
- Explicit is better than implicit.
- Simple is better than complex.
- Complex is better than complicated.
- Flat is better than nested.
- Sparse is better than dense.
- Readability counts.
- Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.
- Although practicality beats purity.
- Errors should never pass silently.
- Unless explicitly silenced.
- In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess. There should be one – and preferably only one – obvious way to - do it. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re - Dutch.
- Now is better than never.
- Although never is often better than right now.
- If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.
- If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
- Namespaces are one honking great idea – let’s do more of those!
Python was designed to be highly extensible. The core of the language is small but it is supported by the large standard library. The design of Python offers some support for functional programming in the Lisp tradition.
An important goal of the Python developers is making Python fun to use. This is reflected in the origin of the name which comes from Monty Python,[44] and in an occasionally playful approach to tutorials and reference materials, such as using examples that refer to spam and eggs instead of the standard foo and bar.[