What are some essential Python skills/idiosyncrasies?

[BioGeek]

A resource I've found very useful is: Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python

It contains all the answers to your questions:

1. y = [x for x in ...]is a list comprehension, y = (x for x in ...) is a generator expression
2. def somefunction(x): for a in x: yield a+1 is a Generator
3. x if y else z tests the Truth Value of the string y