The following principles guide the philosophy of the way we conduct engineering on the team. Inspired by the Zen of Python. The principles presented here are agnostic to role; they should be observed equally by everyone.

• Optimality is reached through first-principles design.
• Form and function designed for in tandem unlocks better local minima.
• Broad search spaces are better than narrow.
• Simple is better than complex.
• Complex is better than complicated.
• Beautiful is better than ugly.
• Explicit is better than implicit.
• Flat is better than nested.
• Sparse is better than dense.
• If the design is hard to explain, it's a bad idea. If the design is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
• Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
• Although practicality beats purity.
• In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
• There should be one—and only one—obvious way to do it.
• Now is better than later.
• There are no solutions, only tradeoffs
• Acronyms are the bane of learning.
• Portability is the cure to obsolescence.
• If a senior engineer copies your work, you may have done something right.