Pythonic style

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 29 Apr 2016 10:48 am, Gregory Ewing wrote:

> MRAB wrote:
> 
>> Is it worthy of being in the Zen of Python?
> 
> +1. Maybe something along the lines of:
> 
>     Dunder methods are for defining, not calling.
>     Unless you're a dunderhead[1].
> 
> [1] Meant in the sense of an enthusiast, cf. gearhead.



I think that the advice to not call dundermethods directly is excellent
advice, but it doesn't belong in the Zen. Look at the Zen: it's all pretty
abstract:

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.

etc. There's very little[1] concrete advice in the way of specificities such
as:

- don't use floats for money;
- use namedtuple for the equivalent of a C struct or Pascal record;
- composition should be preferred over inheritance;

etc. "Don't use dunders" is much closer to the second, more specific type of
advice which doesn't really fall into the Zen's bailiwick.

Better suited for the Zen would be:

"Not everything needs to be a one-liner."

which is nicely abstract and also completely useless for deciding which
things should and shouldn't be, as good koans ought to be.




[1] By which I mean none.


-- 
Steven