Introduction

Python is not just a programming language — it is made up of a community of programmers who use, maintain, and enjoy the Python programming language. As with any community, its members have a shared culture and shared values. The values of the Python community are well summarized in Tim Peter's document The Zen of Python (PEP 20), which includes this statement, among others:

"There should be one — and preferably only one — obvious way to do it."

The Python community has a long history of friendly rivalry with another community of programmers centered around the Perl programming language. Perl was designed around the idea that There Is More Than One Way To Do It (TIMTOWTDI, which is pronounced "Tim Toady"). While Tim Peter's line in PEP 20 is a dig at Perl, it also introduces the idea of pythonicity.

Code is pythonic if it clearly and obviously works the way that a Python programmer would expect it to work. Sometimes...