Better coding

Task 5: GitHub assignment write more readable code using these suggestions

Please checkout the assignment repo and follow through with the examples and instructions below. Commit any changes to a new branch and open a pull request. If the autograding/CI checks succeed, you have completed all tasks and can merge the pull request with main to submit your assignment.

Demonstrations

I will demonstrate how to improve the readability in some code snippets. This has mostly to do with design decisions. Advice: Plan first, code second!

Further examples

Here are further examples, loosely based on this video. Feel free to take a look if any of these suggestions may help you write better code in the future. Please not that brevity has its limit and sometimes using more lines to write a piece of code can actually be better: If it helps to improve understanding of the code.

Why you should run code in your module only if __name__ is "__main__"

Always encapsulate your module’s content in functions/classes and have all function calls and instantiations contained after the statement

if __name__ == "__main__"

Why? Because, if you import your code as a module, all code that is not contained in a function or class will be run. Now, if you directly run the module,__name__ will be set to "__main__". But if the module is imported, __name__ is set to the module’s name. See the examples module1.py and module2.py in the assignment repo folder chapter5.

Subtask (i): Run the code in module1.py and module2.py and see what is run upon import and how __name__ changes.

Ternary conditionals

Use ternary conditionals to simplify if ... else statements.

Example

Subtask (ii): Fix the conditional in chapter5/ternary.py to use a ternary conditional.

Context managers

Use context managers to not have to worry about tear-down methods, like closing a file. Using with open, for example, automatically closes the file after it has been read.

Example

Subtask (iii): Use a context manager in chapter5/context_managers.py.

Using enumerate

Use enumerate when you want to access both the list item and its index at the same time when iterating.

Example

Subtask (iv): Use enumerate in the loop in chapter5/enumerate.py.

Using zip

Use zip if you want to iterate over two lists simultaneously.

Example

Subtask (v): Use zip for the loop in chapter5/use_zip.py.

Task 5: Now you should have completed all edits on your assignment repo and should be able to submit the results (if the autograding and CI do not raise any issues).