Book Image

Modern Python Cookbook

Book Image

Modern Python Cookbook

Overview of this book

Python is the preferred choice of developers, engineers, data scientists, and hobbyists everywhere. It is a great scripting language that can power your applications and provide great speed, safety, and scalability. By exposing Python as a series of simple recipes, you can gain insight into specific language features in a particular context. Having a tangible context helps make the language or standard library feature easier to understand. This book comes with over 100 recipes on the latest version of Python. The recipes will benefit everyone ranging from beginner to an expert. The book is broken down into 13 chapters that build from simple language concepts to more complex applications of the language. The recipes will touch upon all the necessary Python concepts related to data structures, OOP, functional programming, as well as statistical programming. You will get acquainted with the nuances of Python syntax and how to effectively use the advantages that it offers. You will end the book equipped with the knowledge of testing, web services, and configuration and application integration tips and tricks. The recipes take a problem-solution approach to resolve issues commonly faced by Python programmers across the globe. You will be armed with the knowledge of creating applications with flexible logging, powerful configuration, and command-line options, automated unit tests, and good documentation.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using a class to encapsulate data and processing


The essential idea of computing is to process data. This is exemplified when we write functions that process data. We looked at this in Chapter 3, Function Definitions.

Often, we'd like to have a number of closely related functions that work with a common data structure. This concept is the heart of object-oriented programming. A class definition will contain a number of methods that all control the internal state of an object.

The unifying concept behind a class definition is often captured as a summary of the responsibilities allocated to the class. How can we do this effectively? What's a good way to design a class?

Getting ready

Let's look at a simple, stateful object—a pair of dice. The context for this is an application that simulates the casino game of Craps. The goal is to use a simulation of results to help invent a better playing strategy. This will save us from losing real money while we try to beat the house edge.

There's an important...