Request a short code review

[André]

On Apr 17, 7:11 pm, ja... at reggieband.com wrote:
> > I am not necessarily looking to make the code shorter or more
> > functional or anything in particular.  However if you spot something
> > to improve then I am happy to learn.
>
> To give an example of what I mean I have already altered the code:
>
> def output_random_lesson_of_type(self, type=None):
>     """Output a lesson of a specific type.
>        If no type is passed in then output any type."""
>     output_lessons = self.lesson_data["lessons"]
>     if type:
>         filtered_lessons = filter(lambda x: x["type"] == type,
>             self.lesson_data["lessons"])
>         if filtered_lessons:
>             output_lessons = filtered_lessons
>         else:
>             print "Unable to find lessons of type %s." % type
>     return self.output_random(output_lessons)
>
> Changes:
>  - Respected a column width of 80
>  - Created the output_lessons variable, assigned it to a default.
>    This remove an else statement and reduced the call to
>    self.output_random to a single instance in the return statement
>
> Cheers,
> James

I prefer, especially for longer methods, to return as soon as possible
(thereby indicating that the code below is irrelevant to a particular
condition).  Thus, I would replace
output_lessons = filtered lessons
by
return self.output_random(filtered_lessons)

André