A Python Æsthetic: Beauty and Why I Python

Brandon Rhodes
Why did I start using Python in the late 1990s? Was it for any of the reasons that I remain a fan today? In this talk we will explore how Python, even while training us to avoid and become blind to its rough edges, works to teach us ne

[@SPrintF1]

It's not obsessive. It's practical. No, more: it's polite. When you write code, you have to keep in mind those who will follow you. Just yesterday, I went back and corrected something I wrote more than a decade ago. Older Me chuckled over the assumptions of Younger Me and gently fixed the issue. Write for readability was something I learned early, because the programmer that has to come back and fix a problem might be YOU! I've had to wade through a lot of poorly-written code that obviously was just spat out to fix something on someone's to-do list and programmers like that should just go back to flipping burgers or something. A program is a narrative. “I am collecting these data and transforming it like so!” If your code obscures your narrative, then you are a poor author. It kills me that so many so-called programmers don’t get this. It’s community! Maybe no one will ever look at that function you wrote years ago. It’s perfect; never change it! But, 99 times out of 100, some poor slob (maybe YOU) will have to go back and puzzle out what you were up to. Writing code thoughtfully with respect to those will have to come after you is worth the effort.

[@MrBeiragua]

+Karl Merris When I look at my old codes, I take sometime to realize the meaning o things. The reason, I wrote them in a very ugly way.

[@letmecodefront-end6753]

+Karl Merris I agree. Very well put.

[@audreyr]

Is this talk obsessive? Yes. Is that a good thing? Yes! Thank you, Brandon, for sharing a bit of your visual thought process from your coding.

[@tukkek]

Funny how he is obsessive with beauty yet has so many dense slides. My style is very different, for one I only do variables or functions to factor (eliminate duplicate) code. But I agree Python is the most beautiful mature language today - his talk is very good god yet barely scratches at the whole. No control brackets, for starters?! Oh and for anyone who is doubtful of the speakers awesomeness: 46:22 he repeats the question for us. If you don't know how great this is, you're weaker than him.

[@MustafaTulu]

Very informative. Especially the comments on "XP Guys" were good. Of course it is obsessive, and that's what we expect from our coders and code. Code is not poetry. There might be times when good code looks like good poetry. But it is unacceptable to have code looking like bad poetry. (We do not even have the definition of bad poetry) All conventions are derived from this basic principle: Code is written to be understood, and modified.

[@ArneBab]

import piano piano.bench() ^ I love this! And I wish GNU Guile had it!

[@Tritium21]

YOU CHANGED PEP8! Check python-ideas for april 15th, 2016.

[@TsungWeiHu]

Brandon Rhodes shows you how to Think Like a Pythonista. Here is his slides rhodesmill.org/brandon/slides/2012-11-pyconca/

[@todddoughty1571]

Did anything ever come out of the suggestion for codifying beyond pep8 best practices?

[@ArneBab]

for foo.bar: that’s why we have readline. There the example of keeping typing works beautifully.

[@ChrisAhlstrom]

Debian (Sid) has *awesome* readline support; mount, ssh, even the lowly mpc command, will auto-complete.

[@RedBooster]

a bit obsessive and unnecessary. some useful information but at times just plain silly.