Write Python Code Properly!

Welcome back to another video! In this video, I am going to be showing you the proper way to write Python code. What I mean is that I will be going over the proper python conventions and the most important parts of the python style guide known as PEP8. There is a lot in PEP8 but I'll only go over the most common mistakes made.
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📄 Resources 📄
Python PEP8 Style Guide: www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0...
⭐️ Timestamps ⭐️
00:00 | Write Proper Code!
02:27 | PEP8 Guideline
03:00 | Installing An Auto Formatter
05:29 | General PEP8 Guidelines
07:01 | Naming Conventions
10:55 | Method Parameter Naming
12:01 | Function And Class Spacing
13:33 | Imports
15:42 | Single Or Double Quotes
17:16 | Whitespaces
21:02 | In-Line Comments
22:12 | is None or == None
24:05 | Try and Except
24:46 | String Prefix and Suffix
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⭐️ Hashtags ⭐️
#TechWithTim #Python

[@haibai1766]

Cases: snake_case lowerCamelCase UpperCamelCase / PascalCase SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE

[@GCKteamKrispy]

Cases: python_case CppCase

[@bassam.2023]

For such a versatile, and useful language, many of Python's conventions are absolutely assinine.

[@sylvainprive1754]

😱😱😱 how dare you ! (Joking)

[@huantian]

Random things: order of imports is recommended to be future imports, builtin packages, 3rd party modules, project specific imports, each separated with a newline. When you have a keyword argument with a typehint, you add the extra spaces: def foo(str: arugment = “hi”):

[@ex0stasis72]

I love the way that snake case looks in PEP-8. At first I was not excited about having to reach my fingers to do the awkward _ characters, but really, I only need to type those when I first declare the variable. Every other time I use that variable, I can just use my editor's autocomplete and just skip all the underscore characters and then just hit tab to accept the autocomplete.

[@ncmathsadist]

If you use if foo[3:] == "bar" and you subsequently change "bar" to "barf", your code is broken unless you also edit the slice size. This is brittle. That's why Guido recommends endswith and startswith.

[@zulucharlie5244]

Excellent, to-the-point summary of PEP8 convention. Thank you.

[@tahirahmed96]

Tim I'm beginner at python and overall new to programming your videos are helping me a lot. I'm really interested in data analysis can you please make some videos on this topic

[@ankitaburman5406]

You are right now my most favourite person on this planet...❤️ Thanks a ton for all the learning videos

[@tadiwashangwa4931]

I was actually researching on this thank you Tim

[@Cpt_Diabetes]

Hi Tim, i'm very new to tech and a career changer, i just want to say that the content here is one of the best explanations i've found scouring the interwebs!

[@BartWillems1969]

Irony: in an article title "write proper python code" using "from os import path" as an example when Pathlib is by far the preferred solution for handling file paths

[@yourdadsbestfriend7101]

glad im not the only one who thought about that

[@evanhagen7084]

Is pathlib built in?

[@pierre-manchon]

@@evanhagen7084 yes

[@BartWillems1969]

@@evanhagen7084 it’s in the standard library, just like `os` - no pip install required.

[@nguyenanhquan4431]

You missed the point. He was just giving an example that if you import multiple things from the same module then you should put them on the same line according to PEP8.

[@Landon_Hughes]

I swear every time I look something up, you release a new video on the subject lol Thanks!

[@roydadancegod]

Also could you cover what to do for parameter and return type and the spacing for it? For example def function(a:int, b:list) -> list

[@Markyroson]

Camel case: aka how you spot people who started in other programming languages and have a hard time breaking the habit in Python 😂

[@sucman1684]

actually, i started in python and started with camelcase because that’s how i used to write my usernames in games.

[@user-uf1js6uq2f]

Glyyy Yvvbg G Yep

[@Jay_0605]

Me because I started with java and javascript

[@FADHsquared]

This is why you need a linter

[@luigidabro]

Camel case: How to future-proof your code, when you learn another programming language

[@zachfenton608]

this is awesome and explained well why these rules are used

[@sumitpatidar3143]

Unconsciously I follow all pep8 style guide you have discussed in this video 😄

[@danub5551]

same lmao i thought i was the only one

[@satyampatel3713]

ah yes pycharm does annoy with those squiggly lines

[@SajidAli-wy1zs]

your channel is best. From bangladesh.

[@akira_asahi]

Thank you for the video. I am grateful for your time and contribution. Kind regards, Akira.

[@therzook]

Yep, defo show it in work tomorrow... our team's coding is like NY subway wall, snake here, camel there, pascal on top and indentation may vary a lot.... Not to mention those long strings punching through the sides of 2 screens...

[@TheFootballPlaya]

i didn't know about the startswith thing either, good to know. i've seen it around used a lot. question though, for function names that are multiple words, do these act similarly to variable names as in they are snake case as well, or is there some other way of denoting functions as opposed to variables? also, do we treat lambda functions any differently in this regard if they are stored in a variable?

[@AI-tg2by]

Love your vids! Could you do any about when you would use classes because I do get confused slightly.. maybe through doing a project - that would be ace!

[@Dante-nu5cn]

Yes please! Great idea, I was just thinking about that!

[@rachinter]

This video should have millions of views 💯❤️🔥

[@emaddeve20]

Wow this is vedio is so useful. Thank You Tim

[@terrisquire1940]

Thanks for this!

[@mohbkhaled6051]

The autoformat feature on save is just a life saver my code instantly looked X10 better by just saving the file

[@melissaleigh3013]

Amazing and Tim you are glowing

[@ahmadanis9930]

Add ``` "python.linting.flake8Enabled": true, "python.linting.enabled": true, "editor.rulers": [70, 79] ``` to settings.json in .vscode for seeing a line for 80 characters and warnings for not following pip8

[@captain_trips994]

awesome video. thank you

[@Lunolux]

nice i try to use more often convention name when i'm programming now, not very easy

[@peschebichsu]

Amazing video, was wishing for a while you talk about it! One thing about the comments (ca. 21:55): Is there a convention, when the comment should be on the same line as the code and when it should be on a new line above it?

[@paulzupan3732]

There's no real convention for it, you basically just have to use your own discretion. One way that I decide which one to do is that if I'm trying to write a comment about a block of code, I put the comment above the block of code, but if there's something I want to say about a specific line of code, then I just put it on the same line.

[@ZombiProcess]

Great video thanks

[@DefWorlds]

It would be great to see some best practices re how best to break long lines and line up chains of method calls.

[@save-scum]

What screen recording + editing software do you use? Your code is presented very aesthetically and in an easy to read/comprehend way!

[@delufr]

To record the screen he uses OBS (as basically 99% of content creators), the webcam can be also implemented directly in obs, without using an editing software, anyway if you are looking for a free editing software the best is Davinci Resolve!

[@sergiomendoza6833]

Great vid! Tim!

[@bartugonulalan]

when he says "is not not not is " my 5 years old brain: **giggles**

[@FADHsquared]

It is what it is

[@codingcrashkurse6429]

Won´t get as many views as normally, but this is such an important topic!. I always get crazy when I see people coding x == None or even worse: try: x() except: pass

[@Chemasaurus]

Wait, what's wrong with if x == None:

[@mmbaguette1520]

@@Chemasaurus It's faster to do *if (type(x) is int)* for example.

[@Chemasaurus]

@@mmbaguette1520 But is there anything wrong with if x == None? Is it any different than if x is None?

[@Joe-zg9eq]

whats wrong with try: [CODE] except: pass I use that a lot

[@inakiarias7465]

@@Joe-zg9eq If you are trying something and it fails, you should handle the errors, ideally. At least you would log or state what's the error that happened. But passing after failing in a try block is considered very bad because of that.

[@alagappank1242]

Tim , some Tutorial for Data Science please....

[@Queso791]

Thank god, a list of my fav youtuber 😎👌, keep up Tim.

[@typeterson8376]

Unexpected banger. As the expression (roughly) goes: "any fool can write code that a computer can understand, the challenge is to write code that a human can understand"

[@georgeseese]

Thanks for your expertise. At 22:35 it appears that you're saying if x = False or if x = 0, "if x:" will trigger. Isn't it the opposite? The shorthand "if x:" refers to True or something > 0, depending on the object reference.

[@markoburak6549]

that's right, it should be if not x:

[@dimitriosdesmos4699]

thanks very nice

[@tablenkov4993]

Thanks.

[@umeshlab987]

This is useful for timathon

[@inselmanu]

Danke Tim und Grüße aus Deutschland

[@muhammadanique2256]

Hey Tim ! Please do a react and Django project , please 🥺

[@Schnieker]

What about numbers? Can i name my variable test_1 or should i name it test_one?

[@richardcasey4439]

This is so important for readability

[@omerfi]

I think you should make a playlist about clean code and add this video to the playlist

[@Richard_GIS]

I do programming in python on a daily basis and i really do not follow most of the pep Guidelines as python itself is not really following their own standards too. The best tip you also mention is, consistency. I do camelcase for normal var, for class and function i follow the pep with the underscore.

[@pietheijn-vo1gt]

What do you mean python is not following their own standards? Maybe you can deviate from PEP if you work on projects by yourself, but if you work in a team you really all have to follow the same styleguide otherwise the codebase becomes a mess. So why not follow PEP. Most IDE's can automatically check for it as well.

[@Richard_GIS]

@@pietheijn-vo1gt no you missed the point, I do follow the pep, as in some cases it could cause follow up issues if you do not. But considering Naming vars and defs it is not that important but consistency through out the script. When you write camel case var instead of underscore, no Big deal. In bigger projects you do follow the standard AND what the team deside, if there is a preference to write vars like this and that. I am really only referring to naming, nothing more ore less. If a programmer cannot read that, he /she is maybe not a programmer. The key word is consistency. Regarding there own standards, when you read the peps its sometimes a mess what is proposed and what not, what is adopted what not, sometimes it changes..i found it quit hard to read. I read one pep where python itself was not consitent - but sorry i cant remember what was it exactly.

[@pietheijn-vo1gt]

@@Richard_GIS I missed the point? You literally said "i really do not follow most of the pep Guidelines". Maybe you missed the point? I think every team should follow PEP and only deviate if there is a very good reason to do so, everybody agrees and the code linters validate the deviation too. I have contributed to a few open source projects and they tend to use linters that simply reject your commits if it doesn't pass PEP. I haven't found anything inconsistent in PEP so I wouldnt know what you are talking about. But on the other hand PEP is very comprehensive and humans can make mistakes so it wouldn't be weird if there were a few inconsistencies. If you spot them, just report it.

[@therabidpancake1]

Just some random information I find that when I use double quotes that it allows me to use words like in or is . For example print("spike is a good dog ") . Indentation in python doesn't make a lot of sense to me . I know everything after the colon is indented but what I am talking about is why . I tried to have a buddy of mine explain it to me but it is still clear as mud . He says that it executes each line of code in order of the indentation . While that may be true it does not make a tone of sense . So what does the computer recognize def blank(): it would throw an error if I didn't write pass .

[@user-gv9uw7cx6x]

cool video)

[@ismahelo]

What theme and font do you use for VS Code? By the way, very useful tutorial!

[@aduomas5972]

Following.

[@luul4683]

.

[@kekkaigenkei]

Theme: Monokai Font: I think it's the default Consolas The theme enables the font italicizing on function / class declaration

[@Noone-lw6ge]

You should be using spaces for indentation. Me who just uses the default auto-indent from sublime

[@SavorkoTime]

Thank you, after this video almost all bugs on my project were closed! And they fire me, coz they dont need python dev anymore...

[@eyal4]

pleas more open cv :)

[@Raja-tt4ll]

Nice

[@andregarvin5529]

If x is false then the if statement will not trigger. only if the value is True or True equivalent

[@omar72999]

Hey man, this is random but what chair is that? I have the exact same desk as yours (the table top and Alex from IKEA) and have been struggling to find a chair that fits them for a while now. Is your chair comfortable? if so do you mind giving me a link so I can get a similar one?

[@TechWithTim]

It’s a great chair, absolutely love it. It’s called a Herman Miller Aeron chair, I have the classic version but they now have an updated one with ever more features. I also have a head rest which I bought separately

[@omar72999]

@@TechWithTim alright thanks a lot man!

[@Nordlys0]

The new updated chair's head rest can be moved by a 4spaces/tab distance each time to fit the correct indentation of the head rest angle.. hehhe

[@adrielbradley6677]

I always use single quotes for single words 'hello' and then double quotes for longer strings.

[@Sciencedoneright]

It saves time

[@Louis16261]

The PEP8 maximum line length is 79 chars, not 80.

[@adithmanu3715]

You can use Ctrl + J to hide the terminal

[@virgile8957]

the name for the all-caps snake case is screaming snake case.

[@ThEBengaliFriEnDz]

can anyone tell me wich theme tim uses in vs code?

[@AfshinDavoudy]

Black formatter changes "x = x*2 + 1" to "x = x * 2 + 1". So, it is not based on PEP8. am I right?

[@rubaokiller]

what about if __name__ == "__main__": using double equal signs ?

[@sgt391]

When I break code conventions I know I'm writing shitty buggy code that I'm going to rewrite in the future

[@bpodem]

code is code

[@nickvledder]

How about: pip install pycodestyle?

[@kristjanbradac8931]

Can someone tell me what colorsheme is this, pls? It's like in sublime text3. :D

[@soulninjadev]

@Hethat take notes :mhm:

[@Klannahar]

What about class variables? Same as normal variables? Is this style used in any language? "myVariableName"

[@sherluck_code]

The class variables should still be the same as the normal variables, in this case snake case, but if you mean the class name the class name should be a pascal case like class ClassName

[@Klannahar]

@@sherluck_code I ment like self.my_variable, and the question part is just in general. Idk i remember somewhere i saw that type, but not sure it was just a user preference or it was specific to other programing language.

[@santoshkumargouda6033]

From where i get the code?

[@luul4683]

which font is it?

[@harrypotter6894]

mans holding onto that hair for dear life. time for a shave bro!!

[@baptistearnould2313]

What text color is he using on VCStudio ?

[@orangecoat3848]

Monokai, very popular

[@wongkingshun]

I think it is much more easier for viewers to follow a 25 to 30 mins videos long video rather than a 6 videos long video. And subdivide them into different small topics

[@bijeshmohan]

How should I order my imports?

[@fastrockstar1705]

Imports should be grouped in the following order: 1. Standard library imports. 2. Related third party imports. 3. Local application/library specific imports.

[@bijeshmohan]

@@fastrockstar1705 should I order each section alphabetically?

[@fastrockstar1705]

@@bijeshmohan That's up to your liking.

[@0x007A]

The most annoying Python code, regardless of its potential usefulness, is poorly (or completely abscent) commented source code.

[@user-zn8lt8tj5g]

Self-explanatory code does not require comments

[@ed-xs3pu]

@@user-zn8lt8tj5g required... No. But comments on WHY the code is there is quite useful. And comments are much easier for your brain to parse.

[@sscapture]

@@user-zn8lt8tj5g It does

[@Kay-qg1vn]

That's why i use pycharm 😌

[@ayushganguli1359]

I am still a noob but in my limited experience its best not to use black in case of a collaborative project with git. Goodluck merging commits on using black. Auto format makes your life hell on merge

[@orangecoat3848]

Interviewer: "Why were you fired from your previous job?" Me: "Something i did at work" Interviewer: "Which was ?" Me: "Indent camel case with tabs in python in lines with more than 80 lines" Interviewer: "Next please"

[@JorgeLuis-ts6qp]

One of the things I hate the most from Python y how much you must trust the developers. It's incredible there is no way of making a variable constantant!!

[@ed-xs3pu]

I'm new to python and coding. Is there value to having it defined as a constant vs. just capitalizing it. If it's capitalized then you should know not to change its value right? Or is there something else to it?

[@codingboy2254]

Is this guy reading minds, I was literally watching a seminar by uncle Bob on writing clean code , and he posts this video . CREEPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@ethiogazeta]

Ya

[@albertojlorenzorosario2759]

camelCaseIsKing change my mind

[@huey1153]

I thought you were going to go into code quality software engineering principles such as DRY, SOLID, KISS and principles like that 😅

[@developertools95]

make some project on python

[@ivernik]

Thank god for pycharm. 😅

[@guitaek4100]

Actually watched the video twice. Especially the spacing was very helpful 👍 however, as far as I know, classes without a parent are going to be the old-style-classes

No, in Python 3 there are not any old-style classes.

[@herojedrus2567]

you did not tell what to do when `from module import thing1, thing2, thing3, thing4, ...` is too long :(

[@demerion]

Can we name a variable "var1"? Or would snake_case be "var_1" in this case? What is the convention when using numbers?

[@chilly111]

I would use more descriptive names and if I needed variables of the same name indexed I would prob store them as a list instead: vars = ['x', 'y', 'z'] and access them like print(vars[2])

[@christianemden7637]

The rules on the use of white spaces seems to be rather inconsistent.

[@donwald3436]

lol 80 columns, 19976 called they want their teletype terminals back.

[@omanavarghess6847]

If you want to break the rules, break them consistently.

[@diamonddemon7612]

i use single quotes for 1 character and double quotes for mor than that

[@stivunnikolov5941]

Is someone really pressing 4 spaces instead of tab?

[@lemmyboy4107]

Just make a makro that 1 tab = 4 spaces xd.

[@stivunnikolov5941]

@@lemmyboy4107 you are very smart boy.... I hope smart enough to feel the irony...

[@lemmyboy4107]

@@stivunnikolov5941 i mean i can send that back. Most ides would brake without a dedicated tab.

[@RoyalTutorial]

Anyone here uses Pydev with Eclipse? Should I make the move to Visual Studio?

[@tooru]

bruh

[@YazhShah]

Always add an empty line at the end of your file.

[@bratpeki]

so you just showed off syntax preferences instead of actually common coding mistakes and hos to correct them?

[@eylonemuskson4177]

_Once you go Black, do you don't...ever, have to worry about messy Python code again...._ I'm a poet.