I dissagree that its better to be overzealous here, because it re-enforces the habbit of writing subpar docstrings. Alternatively, if you always do the work (an

I dissagree that its better to be overzealous here, because it re-enforces the habbit of writing subpar docstrings. Alternatively, if you always do the work (and it is work) to make excellent docstrings, it will affect the way you write code by discouraging splitting code into small obvious functions. It just makes it slightly more annoying. Just as with comments I think you should assume the reader is a somewhat competent human beeing. Explain what needs to be explained, and make a *conscious* decision about it. For most public functions I agree that this usually involves a docstring, but not always.