A Case For List Comprehension As The Best Programming Language Feature

I've always been fascinated by things that exemplifies simplicity and elegance. One way or another, you would notice it if you look carefully – it's not doing too much nor too little. It hit the sweet spot.

In programming, conversations wouldn't go too far until someone mentions Python for its simplicity and brevity. Hence, the idea of a Pythonic code exists. I experienced these characteristics firsthand when I started learning about Python a year ago. And nothing demonstrates this better than the language's feature, List Comprehension.

For example, if we want to create a list of all the numbers from 1 to 50 that is divisible by 3, we would normally use a for loop and follow these steps:

1. Create an empty list
2. Loop over a range of elements or an iterable object
3. Append the number to the list if it satisfies the condition (should be divisible by 3)

Using list comprehension, we can achieve the same result with just one line of code. Just look at that! It looks so compact and easier to read.

In its simplest form, list comprehension looks like this:

new_list = [expression for element in iterable (if conditional)]

It's so powerful that it also offers a way to iterate through a nested for loop.

List comprehension is an extremely useful Python feature that could help developers write algorithms in a much simpler way. But as with many other things, the key is to not overdo or over-engineer it and risk introducing unnecessary complexities. After all, the general rule is to KISS.