Quotes About Python

In a sense, a module is like a single-instance class, without inheritance, which corresponds to an entire file of code.

Class attributes can also be created, though, by assigning attributes to the class anywhere a reference to the class object exists — even outside the class statement.

Operator overloading is coded in a Python class with specially named methods; they all begin and end with double underscores to make them unique. These are not built-in or reserved names; Python just runs them automatically when an instance appears in the corresponding operation.

As usual in Python, it's important to understand fundamental principles like those illustrated in the prior section. Python's "batteries included" approach means you'll usually find precoded options as well, though you still need to know the ideas underlying them to use them properly.

Despite its syntax details, Python's class system really is largely just a matter of searching for an attribute in a tree of objects, along with a special first argument for functions.

Best practice in all Pythons recommends listing all your imports at the top of a module file; it's not required, but makes them easier to spot.

That is, a class is a local scope and has access to enclosing local scopes, but it does not serve as an enclosing local scope to further nested code.

As we get deeper into Python classes, though, keep in mind that the OOP model in Python is very simple; as we've seen here, it's really just about looking up attributes in object trees and a special function argument.

Factories can be a major undertaking in a strongly typed language such as C++ but are almost trivial to implement in Python.

any function that contains a yield statement is turned into a generator function.

everything is a "first class" object in Python —

In the Python way of thinking, explicit is better than implicit, and simple is better than complex.1

As an educator, I've sometimes found the rate of change in Python and its libraries to be a negative, and have on occasion lamented its growth over the years. This is partly because trainers and book authors live on the front lines of such things — it's been my job to teach the language despite its constant change, a task at times akin to chronicling the herding of cats!

ZODB, for example, is similar to Python's shelve but addresses many of its limitations, better supporting larger databases, concurrent updates, transaction processing, and automatic write-through on in-memory changes (shelves can cache objects and flush to disk at close time with their writeback option, but this has limitations: see other resources).

We are no longer the knights who say ni! We are now the knights who say ekki-ekki-ekki-pitang-zoom-boing!

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!

Television is a dirty business. To survive in it you have to be part weasel, part python, and part wolf. To succeed in it, you have to be 99.9 percent great white shark. The capacity for barefaced lying also comes in handy, particularly if you are freelance.

You see, I don't belive that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, that has been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.