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

Chapter 4. Functions, the Building Blocks of Code

 

"To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects."

 
 --Le Corbusier

In this chapter, we're going to explore functions. We already said that everything is an object in Python, and functions are no exception to this. But, what exactly is a function? A function is a sequence of instructions that perform a task, bundled as a unit. This unit can then be imported and used wherever it's needed. There are many advantages to using functions in your code, as we'll see shortly.

I believe the saying, a picture is worth one thousand words, is particularly true when explaining functions to someone who is new to this concept, so please take a look at the following image:

As you can see, a function is a block of instructions, packaged as a whole, like a box. Functions can accept input arguments and produce output values. Both of these are optional, as we'll see in the examples in this chapter.

A function in Python is defined...