Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

How it works...

Functions and their object-oriented cousins, methods, are the workhorses of many programming languages. They allow code reuse, as a function can be called multiple times from different locations within the code. They can even be called from different programs, if the language supports it, for example, Python imports.

Functions also allow abstraction of work. At their most basic level, a function is similar to a black box; all a developer needs to know is what data to feed a function and how the function deals with that data, that is, whether a value is returned. The actual algorithm within the function doesn't necessarily need to be known to use it, as long as the results are consistent.

It is possible to write a program without ...