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  • Writer's pictureAbhijeet Srivastav

Have you ever heard about the Zen of Python?

The Zen of Python by is a collection of 19 "guiding principles" for writing computer programs that influence the design of the Python programming language.


Software Engineer Tim Peters wrote this set of principles and posted it on the Python mailing list in 1999.

Peter's list left open a 20th principle for ''Guido van Ross-um " the creator of the Python to fill.


But the vacancy for 20th principle has not been filled yet!


Peter's Zen of Python was included as entry number 20 in the language's official Python Enhancement Proposals, which was released in public domain.



The principles are listed below:


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!



 

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