Book Image

Mastering Python

By : Rick van Hattem
Book Image

Mastering Python

By: Rick van Hattem

Overview of this book

Python is a dynamic programming language. It is known for its high readability and hence it is often the first language learned by new programmers. Python being multi-paradigm, it can be used to achieve the same thing in different ways and it is compatible across different platforms. Even if you find writing Python code easy, writing code that is efficient, easy to maintain, and reuse is not so straightforward. This book is an authoritative guide that will help you learn new advanced methods in a clear and contextualised way. It starts off by creating a project-specific environment using venv, introducing you to different Pythonic syntax and common pitfalls before moving on to cover the functional features in Python. It covers how to create different decorators, generators, and metaclasses. It also introduces you to functools.wraps and coroutines and how they work. Later on you will learn to use asyncio module for asynchronous clients and servers. You will also get familiar with different testing systems such as py.test, doctest, and unittest, and debugging tools such as Python debugger and faulthandler. You will learn to optimize application performance so that it works efficiently across multiple machines and Python versions. Finally, it will teach you how to access C functions with a simple Python call. By the end of the book, you will be able to write more advanced scripts and take on bigger challenges.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Mastering Python
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
6
Generators and Coroutines – Infinity, One Step at a Time
Index

Code style – or what is Pythonic code?


Pythonic code—when you first hear of it, you might think it is a programming paradigm, similar to object-oriented or functional programming. While some of it could be considered as such, it is actually more of a design philosophy. Python leaves you free to choose to program in an object-oriented, procedural, functional, aspect-oriented or even logic-oriented way. These freedoms make Python a great language to write in, but as always, freedom has the drawback of requiring a lot of discipline to keep the code clean and readable. The PEP8 standard tells us how to format code, but there is more to Pythonic code than syntax alone. That is what the Pythonic philosophy (PEP20) is all about, code that is:

  • Clean

  • Simple

  • Beautiful

  • Explicit

  • Readable

Most of these sound like common sense, and I think they should be. There are cases however, where there is not a single obvious way to do it (unless you're Dutch, of course, as you'll read later in this chapter). That is...