I've always felt that Pythonic rule was about intuition and idioms, rather than restriction. It isn't saying only one way should be available. It's saying a problem should have an obvious solution, one that all Python programmers agree is clearly the right call. I agree with that. It makes code easier to maintain, and by more people, and reduces the chance of errors because solutions are obvious, not clever. In fact it's the same thing people like about writing Go code. It's worth remembering that when this was written, Python was growing because it converted ex-Perl devs. The statement was partly a stance against Perl's TIMTOWTDI, one important factor (among others) for Perl's notorious unreadability.