November 2010
Intermediate to advanced
624 pages
18h 14m
English
Content preview from Real World Instrumentation with PythonBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
The Python Programming Language
Now that you have (hopefully) at least installed Python, we can take a quick tour through some of the main features of the language.
Python is an interpreted language. More accurately, it is a bytecode compiled interpreted language. What this means is that Python performs a single-pass conversion of program text into a compact binary pseudolanguage referred to as bytecode. This is what is actually executed by the interpreter, which is itself a form of virtual computer that uses the bytecode as its instruction set. This approach is common with modern interpreted languages, and if the virtual machine and its instruction set are well designed and optimized, program execution can approach some respectable speeds. Python is highly optimized internally and demonstrates good execution speeds. It will never be as fast as a compiled language that is converted into the raw binary machine language used by the underlying physical processor itself, but for most applications the speed difference is of little concern. This is particularly true when one considers that nowadays the typical processor (the CPU, or central processing unit) in an average PC is running at between 1 and 3 gigahertz (GHz). Way back in time when a CPU running at a speed of 30 megahertz (MHz) or so was considered fast, code efficiency and program execution speed were much bigger concerns.
If you are new to Python, or even if you aren’t, the book Python Pocket Reference by Mark Lutz (O’Reilly) ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.