Book Image

Modular Programming with Python

By : Erik Westra
Book Image

Modular Programming with Python

By: Erik Westra

Overview of this book

Python has evolved over the years and has become the primary choice of developers in various fields. The purpose of this book is to help readers develop readable, reliable, and maintainable programs in Python. Starting with an introduction to the concept of modules and packages, this book shows how you can use these building blocks to organize a complex program into logical parts and make sure those parts are working correctly together. Using clearly written, real-world examples, this book demonstrates how you can use modular techniques to build better programs. A number of common modular programming patterns are covered, including divide-and-conquer, abstraction, encapsulation, wrappers and extensibility. You will also learn how to test your modules and packages, how to prepare your code for sharing with other people, and how to publish your modules and packages on GitHub and the Python Package Index so that other people can use them. Finally, you will learn how to use modular design techniques to be a more effective programmer.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Modular Programming with Python
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Divide and conquer


Divide and conquer is the process of breaking a problem down into smaller parts. You might not know how to solve a particular problem, but by breaking it down into smaller parts, you can then solve each part in turn, which then solves the original problem.

This is a very general technique, of course, and doesn't just apply to the use of modules and packages. However, modular programming helps you work through the divide and conquer process: as you break your problem down, you discover that you'll need a part of your program which performs a given task or range of tasks, and Python modules (and packages) are the perfect way of organizing those tasks.

We have done this several times already in this book. For example, when faced with the challenge of creating a chart-generation library, we used the divide and conquer technique to come up with the notion of a renderer that could draw a single chart element. We then realized that we would need several different renderers, which...