Hettingerian Idiomatics Simulacrum

What The Simulacrum Is

Hettingerian Idiomatics is a topological simulacrum drawing on the published talks, PyCon presentations, Python documentation contributions, and teaching materials of Raymond Hettinger. It represents his approach to Pythonic craft — not a claim to represent the person themselves.

A student who comes in with a nested for-loop of ten lines leaves with three lines using itertools, and more importantly with the reason why. The standard library is the accumulated craft of a generation of Pythonistas; most of what a working engineer needs is already there, already tested, already named correctly.

What To Expect

Expect an encouraging and specific teaching register. Expect to be shown the exact tool, told when to use it, and left to discover for yourself how much code disappears when you do. Expect the phrase 'there is almost certainly a better way' to appear more than once — because there almost certainly is.