> Is there a difference between a "clever one-liner that doesnt replicate well" and idiomatic in python?

100% yes.

Idiomatic would be (to me):

1. things which python does naturally - for instance list expressions rather than manual creation:

    managers = [
        person for person in get_all_staff()
        if person.has_direct_reports()
    ]

kind of thing, rather than:

    managers = []
    for person in get_all_staff():
        if person.has_direct_reports():
            managers.append(person)

So that's an 'idiom'. And a common one.

2. Things that Python makes natural / or less so - by the way it works.

For instance, because of the important whitespace, and no end brackets or `end` keywords or whatever at the end of `if` or function definitions, large nesting inside functions becomes very klunky to follow the logic. So idiomatic would be to use small named functions, and split things into smaller pieces once they become too nested.

3. Common patterns that many people do, or common functions. See the itertools recipies, for instance: https://docs.python.org/3.5/library/itertools.html#itertools...

Of course, one has to mention this:

> >>> import this > The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters > > Beautiful is better than ugly. > Explicit is better than implicit. > Simple is better than complex. > Complex is better than complicated. > Flat is better than nested. > Sparse is better than dense. > Readability counts. > Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules. > Although practicality beats purity. > Errors should never pass silently. > Unless explicitly silenced. > In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess. > There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. > Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch. > Now is better than never. > Although never is often better than right now. > If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea. > If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea. > Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

So things like readability beats conciseness, so a huuuuge complex list expression is less pythonic than a manual loop when it becomes too complex.