doctest, unittest, or if __name__='__main__'

[Christoph Zwerschke]

lollipopenator at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi there Christopher, I was wondering if you (or anyone reading this )
> could quickly summarize the ways in which unittest is unpythonic, or
> point me to somewhere which discusses this.
> Is this 'consensus opinion' or mainly your own opinion?

It is just a consequence from the fact that unittest is actually a port 
from JUnit (Java) to Python, i.e. a consequence of trying to emulate a 
standard framework that many programmers are already familiar with, 
which is essentially not a bad idea. However, if you try to counterfeit 
Java programming, your code won't be effective or elegant in Python.

> Is there a summary somewhere (in addition to  the Zen of Python thingy)
> of what kinds of things are 'pythonic' and why they are considered so?
> I see it referred to a lot, and am starting to get a feel for it in
> some areas but not others.

It's probably never been listed completely (and it also changes slowly 
as the language evolves). Programming in an unpythonic way is like 
driving a nail with a screwdriver. Here are some more explanations:
http://faassen.n--tree.net/blog/view/weblog/2005/08/06/0
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/europython/2005-April/004975.html

-- Christoph