I'm responding to the OP here, not to Alex, but I'm quoting his text to expand on it. :)
On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 3:52 PM, alex23 <wuwe...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sep 21, 3:34 pm, Vineet <vineet.deod...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Amongst the python idioms, how the below-mentioned make sense? >> ## There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. >> --- In programming, there can be a number of ways, equally efficient, to do >> certain thing. > > This isn't talking about your Python code as much as about Python > itself. The "it" in the zen there refers to some programming task. For instance, there's only one obvious way to increment an integer: spam += 1 Python's philosophy is to have just that, and to not trouble itself with "spam++" and "++spam" and the distinction between them. As a C programmer, I'm quite accustomed to them, and know what they mean, but not everyone does. And don't get me started on "&&" vs "and" in PHP... Python is a simpler and cleaner language for not having superfluous operators. >> ## Although never is often better than *right* now. >> --- How come "never" is better that "right now" ? > > It's better to not add a language feature than it is to add it poorly, > especially when you endeavour to provide backwards compatibility as > much as possible within major versions. The compatibility issue is the thing here. It's better to get something good now rather than dither for another fifty years, because the longer you dally, the more code will be written using third party libraries. But it's better to not put it into the standard library at all than to put in a messy API that now can't be changed because code's using it. The Zen of Python is a whole lot of tradeoffs and ideas. Several of them balance each other directly. Some, while not contradicted in the Zen itself, are still violated at times in the language and/or stdlib. They're principles, not laws, and need to be read with the understanding that people who write code are intelligent, thinking beings (though a quick look at TheDailyWTF.com proves that this is not universal). ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list