Python: Styling your Code
How should you style your code?
In an earlier article, I showed “The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters”. It is considered to be the core philosophy of Python. Here is it once again:
The Zen of Python, by Tim PetersBeautiful 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 Enhancement Proposal (PEP)
One of the oldest PEP is PEP 8, which tells Python programmers how they should style their code. The number one thing to keep in mind is to make your code as easy as possible to read since it is agreed that code is read more often than it is written. You’ll write your code and then start reading it in to debug it. And when you have to add features to a program, you’ll spend even more time reading your code. And when your code is shared with other programmers, they will have to read your code as well. So it’s best to write code that’s easy to read.
Indentation
PEP 8 recommends that programmers use four spaces per indentation level because it improves readability while leaving room for multiple levels of indentation on each new line. You can also use the TAB key but you should make sure the editor you are using is set to insert spaces rather than tabs.
Don’t mix tab and spaces in your file as it can cause problems that are difficult to figure out.
Line Length
PEP 8 recommends that you limit all of your comments to 72 characters per line. But some teams prefer a 99-character limit. Line length isn’t something to worry about as you learn, but be aware when you collaborate with others.
Blank Lines
Blank lines are great to group parts of your program visually. For example:
numbers = []
print("List of numbers:")
for number in range(1, 11):
value = number
numbers.append(value)
#This is a "Blank Line" that separates parts of the program
message = "My favorite number is " + str(numbers[6]) + "!"
print(message)>>> List of numbers:>>> My favorite number is 7!
As you can see, the comment is there to show an example of where the blank line would be, but in reality there would be no comment there and it would just be an empty space in the code that would separate the creation of the list (from lines one to five) and using the newly created list to produce a message (from lines seven and eight).
The blank lines would not affect how your code runs, but it will affect how readable your code is to yourself and others.
