Python for R Users

The Zen of Python

Tim Peters

• 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!

Source: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep‐0020/