Which PEP's are must reads?
I'm a fairly strong Python coder, but too much of my style is a little haphazard, and I'm sure there are more Pythonic solutions to many problems than the ones I come up with. Which PEPs are essential for any well versed Pythonista to read?
Definitely PEP 8, a Style Guide for Python.
Although Python is incredibly intuitive, a lot of people do not comprehend his philosophy.
Pep 20: 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!
Also pep 0257 docstring convention
It is now retrospective, but still interesting: I think Things that will Not Change in Python 3000 is a good read, with lots of links to the discussions that preceded the decisions.