Python Coding Techniques and Programming Practices

Introduction:

Python Coding techniques and programming practices are one of the features of a professional programmer. While writing code to solve a problem programmer should make simple choices and have to use basic techniques. This completely depends on the programmer's skill and expertise and how wisely he make choices.

Coding techniques are basically focused on improvising the readability and maintainability of the code.

Readability of source code has a direct impact on the developer so, while coding one should try to write code that can make easy others read and understand.
Code maintainability focuses on making enhancements to existed software system such as adding new features, modifying existed features, fixing bugs and performance improvement easily.

Programming practices are mainly focused on the performance of the code and its enhancements.

Coding Techniques:

coding techniques serve developers as a guide for developing a standard code for a software system. These are categorised into three sections.

Names
Comments
Format

Names:

Names are most influenceable part to understand the logical flow or concept of the code what it mean to be or what it do . ( use related words as variables )

Camel case Notation : variable name is formed with more than a single word next words begin with a uppercase letter so that we can identify words.
- Class level varibale names should starts with uppercase letters
- attribute, method names should starts with lowercase letters
- Examples: isActive, UserRegistration(class), UserLogin, totalPrice, userDetails(attribute), calculateDiscount(method)
Delemeter Notation : variable name is formed with multile words , these words use a delemeter to join and form variable.
- in genereal "_" is used as delimeter.
- is_active, User_Registration(class), User_Login, total_price, user_details(attribute), calculate_discount(method)
Tips:
- variable names should be as small as possible and meaningful
- don't use nagative logic for varibales names (ex: is_not_logged_in )
- think 3-4 minutes about variable names.

Comments:

comments are used in coding for writing help text
comments provide a short description of the code
use comments when they are needed don't write comments on unnecessary things

Format :

It is very important when we are coding for larger projects because the code is altered by a team. so, programmer should format the code in such way that others can easily debug the code and can modify it easily.

Don't write clumsy code use line breaks wherever required or use variables. It makes the code more readable.
Use proper indentation

follow pep8 standards

Python code optimizations:

Looping over numbers:

result = []
for i in range(100):
     if  i% 5 == 0:
         result.append(i)

Final output: 
result = [0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95]

Better way

result = range(0,100,5)
# range(start, end, step)

2. Looping over a list

colours = ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow']
for i in range(len(colours)):
     print colours[i]

Better way

for colour in colours:
     print colour

for i in range(len(colours)):
     print i, '-->', colours[i]

Better way

for i, colour in enumerate(colours):
     print i, '-->', colour

for i in range(len(colours), -1, -1, -1):
     print colours[i]

Better way

for colour in reversed(colours):
      print colour

for colour in sorted(colours):
     print colour

for colour in sorted(colours, reversed=True): 
     print colour

names = ['Anji', 'Ben', 'Catherin']
colours = ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow']
n = min(len(colours), len(names))
for i in range(n):
     print names[i], '-->', colours[i]

Better way

for name, colour in zip(names, colours):
      print name, '-->', colour

for key in dict:
    print key, '-->', d[key]

Better way

for key, value in dict.items():
     print key, value

Best way

for key, value  in dict.iteritems():
     print key, '-->', value

names = ['Steve Jobs','Bill Gates ','Jeff Bezos']
org = ['Apple', 'Microsoft', 'Amazon']
d = dict(zip(names, org))

Better way

from itertools import izip
d = dict(izip(names, org))

izip is faster than zip, zip computes all the list at once, izip computes the elements only when requested. One important difference is that 'zip' returns an actual list, 'izip' returns an 'izip object', which is not a list and does not support list-specific features (such as indexing).

is_master = None
if role == 'master':
    is_master = True
else:
    is_master =  False

Best way

is_master = role == 'master'

note: comparison operator always returns a boolean[True, False]

def switch(case):
      cases = {1: 'case 1',
                    2: 'case 2',
                    3: 'case 3'}
         return cases.get(case, "default")

str_numbers = ['1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9']
numbers = []
for i in str_numbers:
      numbers.append(int(i))

Best way

numbers = map(int, str_numbers)

numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
result = 1
for num in numbers:
     result  *= num

Best way is

def multiply(a, b):
      return a*b
result = reduce(multiply, numbers)

numbers = [2, 7, 5, 4, 6, 1, 8, 9, 7, 3, 7, 5, 9, 3, 8, 4, 9, 6, 8, 5, 9, 7, 2, 6, 8, 8, 7, 6, 5, 9, 1, 1, 5, 5, 7, 4, 1, 0, 1, 1, 5, 4, 8, 4, 8, 7, 7, 8, 0, 1, 6, 8, 4]
list = []
for num in numbers:
      if num % 3 == 0:
            list.append( num )

Better way is

def devide3(n):
      return n%3 == 0
list = filter(devide3, numbers)