Better Python Code: A Guide for Aspiring Experts

4

Advanced Python Usage

This chapter continues to focus on features of pure Python—that is to say, primarily on built-in functions and a few standard library functions within the “almost built-in” subset. However, as the title suggests, the mistakes herein concern features that new or occasional Python programmers do not (yet) use every day.

In Chapter 3, A Grab Bag of Python Gotchas, we addressed the importance of good naming in regard to several patterns, antipatterns, and some outright broken code. Some of the mistakes we look at in this chapter very much reiterate that same theme, but present mistakes advanced developers—arguably too advanced for their own good—are likely to make.

Other features that are often misused—and sometimes simply ...