Friday Finking: Source code organisation

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 9:37 AM DL Neil via Python-list
<python-list at python.org> wrote:
>
> Is it helpful to, and thus, do you have a style/convention for ordering
> the methods within each class in your code?
>
> A major difference however, is that if our mythical collection of
> module-functions has an internal-reference, eg b() requires a(), then
> function a() MUST exist, ie be defined, 'before' function b(). Whereas a
> class's methods may be defined in any (complete) sequence.
>
> So, do you have an orderly method [hah!] for presenting/locating
> class-methods (and module-functions) within your code?
>
> - why bother, the editor does 'the heavy lifting'
> - dunders to the fore
> - alphanumeric sequence by name
> - order of appearance/use in 'mainline code'
> - as they sprang to mind during TDD-creation
> - most-used first, least-used last
> - my code 'at the top', their stuff later...
> - names of Monty Python characters by TV appearance date
> or,
> - some combination of ideas
> and,
> - how do you vary the above when dependencies intrude?
>

"Define before use" is a broad principle that I try to follow, even
when the code itself doesn't mandate this. This generally means that
"if name is main" is the very last thing in the file, and if there's a
main() function or equivalent, that's usually just before that. Any
metaprogramming goes right at the top; sometimes this is mandated (if
I write a decorator function, it has to be above the functions it's
decorating), but even if it's not, metaprogramming goes before the
mainline.

Other than that, I don't have any consistent logic other than a loose
idea of trying to keep related things together.

ChrisA