Python philosophy

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Users of the Python programming language often refer to the the Python philosophy. Code which follow the Python principles of readability and transparency are said to be "pythonic". Conversely, opaque or obfuscated code is regarded as "unpythonic". These principles were famously characterized by Python developer Tim Peters in The Zen of Python

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 2.1.2 and later embed these points as an easter egg. The "import this" statement will output them, as in:

$ python
Python 2.2 (#1, Apr 17 2002, 16:11:12)
[GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on some-os
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import this

External link

[The original Zen of Python]

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