TOtosh·Jun 9, 2024Submission
4 points · Open discussionamontalenti
elements-of-python-style
Learning & Reference2016–2024
amontalenti / elements-of-python-style
elements-of-python-style
Goes beyond PEP8 to discuss what makes Python code feel great. A Strunk & White for Python.
4Distinct people
10Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.5KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Goes beyond PEP8 to discuss what makes Python code feel great. A Strunk & White for Python.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year10 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-01-03 16:09:31 UTC to 2024-06-09 21:43:52 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
10 sourcesI had 2 suggestions (plus a blog post) in my style guide here:
https://github.com/amontalenti/elements-of-python-style#some...
The style guide itself, published a few years back, also has some suggestions with small code snippets.
In Ask HN: High quality Python scripts or small libraries to learn fromOne could argue: given that so much useful software has been written with Python after so many years without anonymous functions (beyond lambda expressions), perhaps GvR had some wisdom in never upgrading the lambda expression beyond single-line expressions.[1] It does mean that Python programs tend to be more procedural / imperative / object-oriented in style rather than functional, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. You can still write some nice quasi-functional code that is quite readable.[2] And I say this as someone who has a lot of fun playing with functional programming, and even once wrote a blog post (based on a technical talk) comparing Python and Clojure.[3]
[1]: https://python-history.blogspot.com/2009/04/origins-of-pytho...
[2]: https://github.com/amontalenti/elements-of-python-style?tab=...
[3]: https://amontalenti.com/2
Read the rest
I've mentioned this before and I'm still curious to hear more.
> Barry Warsaw, one of the core Python developers, once said that it frustrated him that "The Zen of Python" (PEP 20) is used as a style guide for Python code, since it was originally written as a poem about Python's internal design. [0]
I did a quick search for more background but didn't find anything.
[0]: https://github.com/amontalenti/elements-of-python-style#a-li...
In Coconut – Pythonic functional programming languageI wrote a similar kind of style guide for Python.
https://github.com/amontalenti/elements-of-python-style
"Elements of Python Style": goes beyond PEP8 to discuss what makes Python code feel great.
Looking forward to reading Elements of Clojure. Python is my primary language but Clojure is my hobby language.
In Elements of ClojureI came across this recently:
> Barry Warsaw, one of the core Python developers, once said that it frustrated him that "The Zen of Python" (PEP 20) is used as a style guide for Python code, since it was originally written as a poem about Python's internal design. [0]
I did a quick search for a little more background but didn't find anything. I'd be curious to hear more.
[0]: https://github.com/amontalenti/elements-of-python-style#a-li...
In Code that will break in Python 4I agree. I opened PR #19 to address this:
https://github.com/amontalenti/elements-of-python-style/pull...
Would love to hear what you think of the changes.
In The Elements of Python StyleThanks -- we are actually discussing this possible change in a Pull Request here: https://github.com/amontalenti/elements-of-python-style/pull...
In The Elements of Python Style