Book Image

Mastering Python 2E - Second Edition

By : Rick van Hattem
5 (1)
Book Image

Mastering Python 2E - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Rick van Hattem

Overview of this book

Even if you find writing Python code easy, writing code that is efficient, maintainable, and reusable is not so straightforward. Many of Python’s capabilities are underutilized even by more experienced programmers. Mastering Python, Second Edition, is an authoritative guide to understanding advanced Python programming so you can write the highest quality code. This new edition has been extensively revised and updated with exercises, four new chapters and updates up to Python 3.10. Revisit important basics, including Pythonic style and syntax and functional programming. Avoid common mistakes made by programmers of all experience levels. Make smart decisions about the best testing and debugging tools to use, optimize your code’s performance across multiple machines and Python versions, and deploy often-forgotten Python features to your advantage. Get fully up to speed with asyncio and stretch the language even further by accessing C functions with simple Python calls. Finally, turn your new-and-improved code into packages and share them with the wider Python community. If you are a Python programmer wanting to improve your code quality and readability, this Python book will make you confident in writing high-quality scripts and taking on bigger challenges
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
19
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20
Index

Summary

The Python metaclass system is something every Python programmer uses all the time, perhaps without even knowing about it. Every class is 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 why metaclasses should be used with a lot of caution. While they can be used to make your life much easier, they are also among 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 more easily and arguably better. Actually comprehending the magic that is used inside is generally not needed for the usage of these libraries, which...