Definition of Pythonic?

MRAB google at mrabarnett.plus.com
Sat Apr 11 12:23:43 EDT 2009


John Yeung wrote:
> On Apr 11, 10:08 am, Emmanuel Surleau <emmanuel.surl... at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Having written a few trivial scripts in Python, I'm curious as
>> to how you would sum up the Pythonic philosophy of development.
> 
> A couple of others have already mentioned the Zen of Python, available
> at the Python command prompt.  I would agree with that, but also add
> the caveat that none of the principles expressed there are hard-and-
> fast rules.

"Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity."

This also applies to the Zen itself.

 > Hopefully that is clear from the quasi-contradictory
> nature of the principles, but inevitably there will be some people who
> complain that Python breaks this or that "rule" from the Zen.
> 
> The fact is, it's impossible to satisfy every principle in every
> situation.  To me, Python distinguishes itself for how well it
> balances all of them.  "Compromise" is a word that comes up a lot when
> talking about the design of Python.  To some, that has a negative
> connotation; to me, it's an inevitable consequence of being practical.
> 



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