Book Image

Learning Python

By : Fabrizio Romano
Book Image

Learning Python

By: Fabrizio Romano

Overview of this book

Learning Python has a dynamic and varied nature. It reads easily and lays a good foundation for those who are interested in digging deeper. It has a practical and example-oriented approach through which both the introductory and the advanced topics are explained. Starting with the fundamentals of programming and Python, it ends by exploring very different topics, like GUIs, web apps and data science. The book takes you all the way to creating a fully fledged application. The book begins by exploring the essentials of programming, data structures and teaches you how to manipulate them. It then moves on to controlling the flow of a program and writing reusable and error proof code. You will then explore different programming paradigms that will allow you to find the best approach to any situation, and also learn how to perform performance optimization as well as effective debugging. Throughout, the book steers you through the various types of applications, and it concludes with a complete mini website built upon all the concepts that you learned.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Learning Python
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary


In this chapter, we explored the concept of iteration and generation a bit more deeply. We saw the map, zip and filter functions quite in detail, and how to use them as an alternative to a regular for loop approach.

Then we saw the concept of comprehensions, for lists, dictionaries, and sets. We saw their syntax and how to use them as an alternative to both the classic for loop approach and also to the use of map, zip, and filter functions.

Finally, we talked about the concept of generation, in two forms: generator functions and expressions. We learned how to save time and space by using generation techniques and saw how they can make possible what wouldn't normally be if we used a conventional approach based on lists.

We talked about performances, and saw that for loops are last in terms of speed, but they provide the best readability and flexibility to change. On the other hand, functions such as map and filter can be much faster, and comprehensions may be even better.

The complexity...