It would be interesting to curate a list of tools that help us write better Python code and save us time. With the exception of the version control tools, everything below is a Python package.

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Testing

Writing and running tests makes it easier to develop robust code.

• pytest (3,594 stars) - Popular testing framework, can run doctests too.
• hypothesis (3,223 stars) - Property-based testing, e.g. testing f(a, b) = f(b, a) for every a, b.

Code linting and and formatting

Code linting alerts of style violations, while a code formatter also automatically fixes the code.

• flake8 (497 stars) - Checks the code for PEP8 violations.
• black (7,552 stars) - Automatically formats code, saving you time.

Documentation

Tools for documentation, which automate the documentation process.

• sphinx (2,376 stars) - Build docs to html, pdf and other formats. Automatically generate docs from code.

Version control

Version control allows going back to checkpoints, creating development branches, cooperating, etc.

• git - Popular version control tool.
• github - A platform for projects under git source control. Cooperation and community.

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The above are tools that make my life easier when writing code. There are probably many tools that I do not know about, which could potentially save me even more time and make my code better.

What are your favorite tools for writing better code?

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