Pythonic == easier to read / maintain
In video 6: “Problem solving using more than one solution method” of Intermediate Python programming I stumbled upon a great example of less vs. more Pythonic code.
I like to post this example here to demonstrate that Pythonic code is so much easier to read and maintain (not to mention the satisfaction of writing it!).
Although I was already familiar with reversing a list by using -1 as stride, it was a great reminder that language idioms matter. It makes your code more concise. It leads to more readable code. And more readable code equals more maintainable code!
I posted the example (with explanation and extension) in this notebook.
Summary
This is where the training video ended. I made two additions:
- A. use max with key=len to get the longest palindrome, and
- B. wrap the two pieces of functionalities in two methods.
One note on naming. Uncle Bob has a great video on naming. One subtle trick is to name boolean methods as is_, so is_palindrome makes you expect a boolean being returned. Which is useful as Python (unlike Java for example) does not force you to specify the return type. get_longest_palindrome clearly expresses the intent to retrieve one value, the longest palindrome. Naming is communication!
Conclusion:
The initial code cannot be considered Pythonic, the final code can be in my opinion.
We achieved a couple of things:
- the code is shorter (from 8 to 4 lines)
- the code is more readable and maintainable (using methods that express their intent)
- we can be at pease: we have used two neat language features, making the code more concise
- last but not least, it feels great writing Pythonic code :)
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