Last nights PyGTA topic was Code Aesthetics, I couldn’t make it because of DemoCamp18 Toronto but I thought I would try and share my views on the subject.
Lately I have been converting Open Source Ruby, PHP, and Java code into Python (by hand and knowledge not by a converter) and found a large difference in the way people write code. The newer code is written with the philosophy DRY (Do not Repeat Yourself) which makes it easier to read. Also the switch to developing more framework like layout has help greatly.
One of my favorite bodies of code is WordPress. An Open Source blogging tool written in PHP, WordPress has a excellent layout. Recently I was looking for how they did there Google Gears support and I found it rather quickly. This is one of the advantages of having such an old code base and many contributors.