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:
1. 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
3. Looping over a list and its idices
for i in range(len(colours)):
print i, '-->', colours[i]
Better way
for i, colour in enumerate(colours):
print i, '-->', colour
4. Looping backwards
for i in range(len(colours), -1, -1, -1):
print colours[i]
Better way
for colour in reversed(colours):
print colour
5. sorting in ascending order
for colour in sorted(colours):
print colour
6. sorting in descending order
for colour in sorted(colours, reversed=True):
print colour
7. looping over two collections
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
8. looping over dictionary keys and values
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
10. construct a dictionary from two lists
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).
11. using comparison operator
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]
12. achieve switch/case in python with dict
def switch(case):
cases = {1: 'case 1',
2: 'case 2',
3: 'case 3'}
return cases.get(case, "default")
13. convert a list of strings to numbers
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)
14. multiplying numbers a list of 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)
15. finding multiples of 3 from a random set of 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)
