On: A few things to remember while coding in Python

[ZenPsycho]

Is that clean and neat, or weird and inscrutable? Will it be clear to /anyone/ reading that code what it's doing?

[tzs → ZenPsycho]

I'm a Python newbie, and that code was immediately clear and obvious to me when I read it.

I won't say it would be clear anyone that reads it, because we live in a world where people who claim to be programmers can't do fizz buzz.

[stavros → tzs]

I'm a Python veteran, and, if you do it like this, I'll shoot you.

Add a @memoize decorator and do it there, you need to always be as obvious as possible. Compare:

    @memoize
    def fibonacci(n): pass
    
    def fibonacci(n, memory=[]): pass

You don't even need documentation for the first example.

[paulmcpazzi → stavros]

Starting from Python 3.2 there is a builtin decorator: http://docs.python.org/dev/library/functools.html#functools....

[stavros → paulmcpazzi]

That's fantastic, thanks for the link.

[o1iver → ZenPsycho]

I agree with your sceptisism. This is misusing a language feature, a better approach is using a decorator.