ZEN OF PYTHON DECORATION CODE

ZEN OF PYTHON DECORATION CODE

That is, user code should be able to recover from error conditions as long as the virtual machine is still functional. This maximizes the opportunities for users, sophisticated or not, to help themselves. A large complex system should have multiple levels of extensibility.Support and encourage platform-independent user code, but don’t cut off access to platform capabilities or properties (This is in sharp contrast to Java.).Don’t bother users with details that the machine can handle (I didn’t always follow this rule and some of the of the disastrous consequences are described in later sections).It’s okay if some functionality is not always available, but the core should work everywhere. The Python implementation should not be tied to a particular platform.Other principles weren’t intended as timesavers. (Hence) it’s okay to cut corners sometimes, especially if you can do it right later.Don’t try for perfection because “good enough” is often just that.Don’t fight the environment and go with the flow.

Don’t fret too much about performance-plan to optimize later when needed.

Do one thing well (The 'UNIX philosophy').

“Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” (Einstein).

Borrow ideas from elsewhere whenever it makes sense.

This led to a number of timesaving rules:

However, before I do that, I would like to elaborate on the philosophical guidelines that helped me make decisions while designing and implementing Python.įirst of all, Python was originally conceived as a one-person “skunkworks” project – there was no official budget, and I wanted results quickly, in part so that I could convince management to support the project (in which I was fairly successful). Later blog entries will dive into the gory details of Python's history.

Zen of python decoration