Fluent Python

Pythonâ??s simplicity lets you become productive quickly, but this often means you arenâ??t using everything it has to offer. With this hands-on guide, youâ??ll learn how to write effective, idiomatic Python code by leveraging its bestâ??and possibly most neglectedâ??features. Author Luciano Ramalho takes you through Pythonâ??s core language features and libraries, and shows you how to make your code shorter, faster, and more readable at the same time.

Many experienced programmers try to bend Python to fit patterns they learned from other languages, and never discover Python features outside of their experience. With this book, those Python programmers will thoroughly learn how to become proficient in Python 3.

This book covers:

• Python data model: understand how special methods are the key to the consistent behavior of objects
• Data structures: take full advantage of built-in types, and understand the text vs bytes duality in the Unicode age
• Functions as objects: view Python functions as first-class objects, and understand how this affects popular design patterns
• Object-oriented idioms: build classes by learning about references, mutability, interfaces, operator overloading, and multiple inheritance
• Control flow: leverage context managers, generators, coroutines, and concurrency with the concurrent.futures and asyncio packages
• Metaprogramming: understand how properties, attribute descriptors, class decorators, and metaclasses work

Luciano Ramalho was a Web developer before the Netscape IPO in 1995, and switched from Perl to Java to Python in 1998. Since then he worked on some of the largest news portals in Brazil using Python, and taught Python web development in the Brazilian media, banking and government sectors. His speaking credentials include PyCon US (2013), OSCON (2002, 2013), and 15 talks over the years at PythonBrasil (the Brazilian PyCon) and FISL (the largest FLOSS conference in the Southern Hemisphere). Ramalho is a member of the Python Software Foundation and co-founder of Garoa Hacker Clube, the first hackerspace in Brazil. He is co-owner of Python.pro.br, a training company.