Methods order

[ddundo]

Currently we do not order methods in any particular way, which hinders readability. Could we decide on an order and add it to the wiki?

There doesn't seem to be a PEP suggestion, but I guess most common ordering is: magic methods, public methods, private methods? And then alphabetically within them? I'm not sure what would be best

[ddundo]

There is a nice flake8 extension for this: https://github.com/best-doctor/flake8-class-attributes-order. Unfortunately it's not implemented in ruff (yet) but we can take a look there and see what good ordering practices are

[jwallwork23]

Hm. I am familiar with ordering methods according to private, protected, public in C++ but it's not something I've ever even thought about in Python.

Personally, I prefer the methods to "build up" in the sense that you start with the constructor (__init__), then have some foundational data structures/properties and getters, and then move on to more complicated methods that interact with other ones. (I realise there are probably parts of the codes where this isn't enforced - I've never really tried to). In any case, it would be impossible to automate with a tool (unless it was an AI!).