What PEP 8 guidelines do you ignore, and which ones do you stick to?

Question

I came to know that generally people religiously follow the rules of PEP 8. I want to why is it so important? And what people find inconvenient or inadequate?

Answer 1

In my case, these are the two points where I find it is better not to follow PEP8 rules:

First case:

The rule for "79 characters per line" is totally absurd. Kindly check how unreadable code becomes when doing this:

class Rectangle(Blob):

    def __init__(self, width, height,

                 color='black', emphasis=None, highlight=0):

        if width == 0 and height == 0 and \

           color == 'red' and emphasis == 'strong' or \

           highlight > 100:

            raise ValueError("sorry, you lose")

        if width == 0 and height == 0 and (color == 'red' or

                                           emphasis is None):

            raise ValueError("I don't think so -- values are %s, %s" %

                             (width, height))

        Blob.__init__(self, width, height,

                      color, emphasis, highlight)

2nd Case:

- Imports should usually be on separate lines, e.g.:

    Yes: import os

         import sys

    No:  import sys, os

I always write simple imports together. I don't see any benefit to addressing them all on separate lines: all it does is add new lines from the top of each source file and turn something compact and easy to complex code. This is instantly readable and understandable:

import sys, os, time, gc, inspect, math, doctest

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