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Transforming Code into Beautiful, Idiomatic Python

Next Day Video · talk · Watch on YouTube

Python, Ruby & scripting languagesSoftware practice, open source & careers

What it is

Raymond Hettinger's PyCon 2013 talk on transforming code into idiomatic Python through a series of before-and-after refactorings. It shows how to use iterators, dictionaries, named tuples and other language features well.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN treats it as a must-watch classic for writing Pythonic code, though somewhat dated for modern Python.

  • 9 people recommended it
  • 9 different months
  • 3 strong recommendations
  • first 2014, last 2022

What HN commenters said

  1. “Must watch”

    Idiomatic Python talk relevant to comprehensions versus filter.

    clusmore, 2017-01 · Strong recommendation · in “Origins of Python's “Functional” Features (2009)”

  2. “I'm currently watching one of his videos [1] and it's amazing.”

    Hettinger talk on writing idiomatic Python.

    bhoeting, 2017-11 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: Which programmer do you look up to?”

  3. “the excellent talk "Transforming Code into Beautiful, Idiomatic Python".”

    Excellent talk on simple, clean, thoughtful code with broad applicability.

    jka, 2021-01 · Strong recommendation · in “Software engineering topics I changed my mind on”

  4. “Halfway through and this one seems great so far”

    Great Python talk with enjoyable style

    kriro, 2014-03 · Recommendation · in “Python Language Features and Tricks”

  5. “Great talk on avoiding some of the common pitfalls new python developers step in.”

    Avoiding pitfalls and using nice language features

    msvalkon, 2014-07 · Recommendation · in “Anti-Patterns in Python Programming”

  6. “Topics include: 'looping' with iterators to avoid creating new lists, dictionaries, named tuples and more”

    Hettinger's PyCon talk on iterators, dicts, named tuples and idiomatic Python.

    shackenberg, 2014-11 · Recommendation · in “Python idioms I wish I'd learned earlier”

  7. “Raymond Hettinger's talks are great.”

    Classic 2013 Hettinger talk, though somewhat dated for modern Python.

    kzrdude, 2021-05 · Recommendation · in “Writing Pythonic Rust”

  8. “they are example-heavy and give a good insight to a very Pythonic mind.”

    Example-heavy insight into Pythonic style.

    greggyb, 2021-11 · Recommendation · in “Your users will do what you make easy”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: python, raymond hettinger, pycon, refactoring, best practices

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