The Zen of Python: 19 Pieces of Programming Wisdom

The Zen of Python is the famous philosophical foundation of one of the world's most popular programming languages. And that's no coincidence.

The Zen of Python: 19 Pieces of Programming Wisdom

I know this blog is about Microsoft Access and VBA, but the Zen of Python offers some great advice that applies to all languages, not just Python.

I've reproduced the Zen of Python below, with links to articles (mostly) on this site where you can see practical examples of several of the concepts in action.

The Zen of Python

  1. Beautiful is better than ugly.
  2. Explicit is better than implicit.
  3. Simple is better than complex.
  4. Complex is better than complicated.
  5. Flat is better than nested.
  6. Sparse is better than dense.
  7. Readability counts.
  8. Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
  9. Although practicality beats purity.
  10. Errors should never pass silently.
  11. Unless explicitly silenced.
  12. In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
  13. There should be one–and preferably only one–obvious way to do it.
  14. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
  15. Now is better than never.
  16. Although never is often better than *right* now.
  17. If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
  18. If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
  19. Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

Cover image created with Microsoft Designer

All original code samples by Mike Wolfe are licensed under CC BY 4.0