Many, Small Functions (Python Basics 9)¶
Common Coding Problem¶
- student writes fairly long program (several hundred lines)
- student comes to me and says, “Help, my code doesn’t work.”
- how am I supposed to debug hundreds of lines of vaguely broken code?
A Better Way¶
Some of my best coding advice:
- break your code into many, small, helper functions
- make sure each function does its job correctly
- the main part of your code becomes much more readable as you call these helper functions
Small Functions¶
- ideally, each small function should do one thing
- a function that does more than one thing should be broken into several functions
- functions that do only one thing are more likely to be reusable later
- putting your small funtions in python modules that you can import makes reusing your code easy
Looking for a Sign¶
- if you find yourself copying and pasting chunks of code, that is a clear sign that the code should be put in a small function
Example¶
- see
plotting_pre_small_functions.py
andplotting_after_small_functions.py
in my python basics github repository: https://github.com/ryanGT/python_basics_1