Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Overview of this book

This book covers the unexplored secrets of Python, delve into its depths, and uncover its mysteries. You’ll unearth secrets related to the implementation of the standard library, by looking at how modules actually work. You’ll understand the implementation of collections, decimals, and fraction modules. If you haven’t used decorators, coroutines, and generator functions much before, as you make your way through the recipes, you’ll learn what you’ve been missing out on. We’ll cover internal special methods in detail, so you understand what they are and how they can be used to improve the engineering decisions you make. Next, you’ll explore the CPython interpreter, which is a treasure trove of secret hacks that not many programmers are aware of. We’ll take you through the depths of the PyPy project, where you’ll come across several exciting ways that you can improve speed and concurrency. Finally, we’ll take time to explore the PEPs of the latest versions to discover some interesting hacks.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Foreword
Contributors
Preface
Index

Installing Python on Windows


Compared to *NIX computers, which come with Python installed by default, Windows OS does not include Python out of the box. However, MSI installer packages are available to install Python on a number of Windows-based environments. These installers are designed to be used by a single user, rather than all users of a particular computer. However, it is possible to configure them during installation to allow all system users of a single machine to access Python.

Getting ready

As Python contains platform-specific code for a variety of operating systems, to minimize the amount of unneeded code, Python only supports Windows OSes as long as they are supported by Microsoft; this includes extended support, so anything that has reached end of life is not supported.

As such, Windows XP and older cannot install any Python version beyond 3.4. The Python documentation still states that Windows Vista and newer can install 3.6 and later versions, but Windows Vista reached end of...