Daniel Arbuckle's Mastering Python

PEP 8 and writing readable code

In this section, we'll take a quick look at how to format our code so that it'll be easy to read when we come back to it at some later date or when somebody else has to work with it. We will specifically take a look at indentation rules, the Python code style guide, and finally, the standard naming convention.

Python Enhancement Proposals or PEPs are the documents that establish standards in the Python community. Most PEPs describe new features for Python or Python's standard library, but a few of them are more nebulous. PEP 8 is one of those; it tells us what the Python community considers to be well-written, readable code.