python-guide.md

Python Specific Advice

OOP in Python

• Use raise NotImplementedError to indicate abstract methods.
• private attributes/functions should start with _ in their name, e.g. _secret

General Coding

• Separate large numbers with underscores. Prefer 1_000_000 over 1000000.
• Use _ for unused variables: _, extension = 'foobar.txt'.split('.')
• constants are indicated by all uppercase names.
• Create own types by assigning a base type to a name, e.g. Volt = float

Further down the Pythonic road

• Use context managers when reading files or acquiring locks/semaphores.
  with open('file.txt', 'r') as f:
• Use for-loops that iterate over what you actually need:
  • Elements: for car in cars:
  • Index and Element: for idx, car in enumerate(cars):
  • Elements of multiple lists: for car, driver in zip(cars, drivers):

Example

class Employee(Person):           # inheritance
  count = 0                       # static attr. (shared by all instances)

  def __init__(self, name: str):  # constructor
     super().__init__()
     Employee.count += 1
     self.name = name             # local attr. (local to one instance)
  
     print(Employee.count)