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

Summary


The Python metaclass system is something every Python programmer uses all the time, perhaps without even knowing about it. Every class should be created through some (subclass of) type, which allows for endless customization and magic. Instead of statically defining your class, you can now have it created as you normally would and dynamically add, modify, or remove attributes from your class during definition; very magical but very useful. The magic component, however, is also the reason it should be used with a lot of caution. While metaclasses can be used to make your life much easier, they are also amongst the easiest ways of producing completely incomprehensible code.

Regardless, there are some great use-cases for metaclasses and many libraries such as SQLAlchemy and Django use metaclasses to make your code work much easier and arguably better. Actually comprehending the magic that is used inside is generally not needed for the usage of these libraries, which makes the cases defendable...