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

What are PEPs?


PEPs are design documents that provide information to the Python community, describing new features (or proposed new features) for Python, its processes, or its environment. PEPs provide technical information, as well as the rationale for the document.

As used by the Python foundation, PEPs are the primary mechanism for communicating with the Python community as a whole. One requirement for PEP authorship is to build a consensus among the community members and document any dissenting opinions.

PEPs are kept as text files by the Python foundation, in a content versioning system (CVS). This versioning system acts as the historical record for each PEP, documenting the changes to the document, from first draft to final acceptance. As the CVS is based on GitHub, normal Git commands can be used to access documents, or they can be viewed via a browser at https://github.com/python/peps.

Three types of PEP are available:

  • Standard track: These describe a new feature or implementation for...