**A poem about good coding principles.** > **The Zen of Python - by Tim Peters** > > - 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! Fun note: The “one and preferably only one” has two different types of hyphen spacings on purpose. **** # More ## Source - [[Wikipedia]] - [Zen of Python - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_of_Python) ## Related - These themes are covered in the text - [[Simple is Maintainable]] - simple is better than complex - [[Affordances]] & [[Pit of Success]] - one obvious way to do it - [[Don’t use “Absence of a Signal” as a Signal]] - errors passing silently - [[Feynman Technique]] - explaining to a child (implementation is hard to explain) - [[The Ends Justify the Means]] - special cases shouldn’t break the rules for this reason - [[Namespace]] - explicitly referenced - [[Simple vs Easy]]