Book Image

Expert Python Programming - Third Edition

By : Michał Jaworski, Tarek Ziadé
Book Image

Expert Python Programming - Third Edition

By: Michał Jaworski, Tarek Ziadé

Overview of this book

Python is a dynamic programming language that's used in a wide range of domains thanks to its simple yet powerful nature. Although writing Python code is easy, making it readable, reusable, and easy to maintain is challenging. Complete with best practices, useful tools, and standards implemented by professional Python developers, the third edition of Expert Python Programming will help you overcome this challenge. The book will start by taking you through the new features in Python 3.7. You'll then learn the advanced components of Python syntax, in addition to understanding how to apply concepts of various programming paradigms, including object-oriented programming, functional programming, and event-driven programming. This book will also guide you through learning the naming best practices, writing your own distributable Python packages, and getting up to speed with automated ways to deploy your software on remote servers. You’ll discover how to create useful Python extensions with C, C++, Cython, and CFFI. Furthermore, studying about code management tools, writing clear documentation, and exploring test-driven development will help you write clean code. By the end of the book, you will have become an expert in writing efficient and maintainable Python code.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Before You Start
4
Section 2: Python Craftsmanship
12
Section 3: Quality over Quantity
16
Section 4: Need for Speed
20
Section 5: Technical Architecture
23
reStructuredText Primer

Interfacing with dynamic libraries without extensions

Thanks to ctypes (a module in the standard library) or cffi (an external package), you can integrate every compiled dynamic/shared library in Python, no matter what language it was written in. And you can do that in pure Python without any compilation step, so this is an interesting alternative to writing own extensions in C.

This does not mean you don't need to know anything about C. Both solutions require from you a reasonable understanding of C and how dynamic libraries work in general. On the other hand, they remove the burden of dealing with Python reference counting and greatly reduce the risk of making painful mistakes. Also interfacing with C code through ctypes or cffi is more portable than writing and compiling the C extension modules.

Let's take a look at ctypes in the next section.

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