Exploring Pythonic Code and Common Pitfalls: 7 Tips for Advancing in Python

Background

Python, as a popular language, is favored for its simple syntax and ease of use. However, beginners or those who have learned other languages may easily write code that is not Pythonic or fall into some common pitfalls.

This article introduces 7 tips for advancing in Python, focusing on Pythonic code and common Python pitfalls.

Pythonic Code

Pythonic code refers to code that follows the Python style. While code that doesn’t follow these conventions may not have syntax issues, it may be considered less idiomatic by readers.

Thus, writing Pythonic code is essential for advancing in Python.

Use enumerate instead of range

If coming from another language, it’s common to write loops like this:

animals = ['cat', 'dog', 'moose']
 for i in range(len(animals)): 
     print(i, animals[i])

Python provides a built-in function for a more idiomatic approach:

animals = ['cat', 'dog', 'moose']
 for i, animal in enumerate(animals): 
     print(i, animal)

Use with for Opening and Closing Files

Traditionally, we open files like this:

fileObj = open('spam.txt', 'w')
 fileObj.write('Hello, world!')
 fileObj.close()