Simon Willison’s Weblog

Why is the Zen of Python obfuscated in the “this” module?

26th January 2012

My answer to Why is the Zen of Python obfuscated in the “this” module? on Quora

I imagine the reason is very simple: Because it’s fun!

Posted 26th January 2012 at 2:29 pm · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

More recent articles

Experimenting with Starlette 1.0 with Claude skills - 22nd March 2026
Profiling Hacker News users based on their comments - 21st March 2026
Thoughts on OpenAI acquiring Astral and uv/ruff/ty - 19th March 2026

This is Why is the Zen of Python obfuscated in the “this” module? by Simon Willison, posted on 26th January 2012.

python 1238 quora 1005

Next: Which angels or VCs like to invest in fitness companies?

Previous: What do you miss out on if not staying in the official hotel for PyCon (or other tech conferences)?

Monthly briefing

Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.

Pay me to send you less!

Sponsor & subscribe