What this book covers

Chapter 1, Current Status of Python, showcases the current state of the Python language and its community. We will see how Python is constantly changing and why it is changing. We will learn what to do with old Python 2 code and how to be constantly up to date with what is currently happening in the Python community.

Chapter 2, Modern Python Development Environments, describes modern ways of setting up repeatable and consistent development environments for Python programmers. We will learn differences between application-level and system-level isolation. We will concentrate on two popular tools for environment isolation, virtualenv-type environments and Docker containers, but will also review other alternatives. At the end of the chapter, we will discuss common productivity tools that are extremely useful during development.

Chapter 3, New Things in Python, showcases recent Python language additions. We will review the most important Python syntax changes that happened in the last four releases of Python. We will also take a look at exciting changes that are scheduled for the next major Python release—Python 3.10.

Chapter 4, Python in Comparison with Other Languages, shows how Python compares to other languages. We will learn what programming idioms are and how to recognize them in code. We will take a deeper look into key elements of Python's object-oriented programming model and how it is different from other object-oriented programming languages but will also discuss other popular programming language features like descriptors, decorators, and dataclasses. This chapter should allow programmers with experience in other languages to safely land in the Python ecosystem.

Chapter 5, Interfaces, Patterns, and Modularity, discusses elements of Python that allow for implementing various reusable design patterns. If focuses on the concept of class interfaces and how they can be implemented in Python. It also discusses inversion of control and dependency injection—two extremely useful but not necessarily popular programming techniques.

Chapter 6, Concurrency, explains how to implement concurrency in Python using different approaches and libraries. It features three major concurrency models: multithreading, multiprocessing and asynchronous programming. In this chapter we will learn key differences between those models and how to use them effectively.

Chapter 7, Event-Driven Programming, describes what event-driven programming is and how it relates to asynchronous programming and different concurrency models. We will present various approaches to event-driven programming along with useful libraries.

Chapter 8, Elements of Metaprogramming, presents an overview of common approaches to metaprogramming available to Python programmers. We will learn about common metaprogramming techniques like decorators, as well as metaclasses and code generation patterns.

Chapter 9, Bridging Python with C and C++, explains how to integrate code written in different languages in your Python application. We will learn when extensions in C can be useful and how to create them.

Chapter 10, Testing and Quality Automation, is about providing automated testing and quality processes. We will learn about a popular testing framework—Pytest—and many useful testing techniques. We will also cover tools that can be used to assess code quality metrics and improve code style in fully automated way.

Chapter 11, Packaging and Distributing Python Code, describes the current state of Python packaging and best practices for creating packages that are to be distributed as open source code in the Python Package Index (PyPI). We will also cover the topics of packaging applications for web development and creating standalone Python executables for desktop applications.

Chapter 12, Observing Application Behavior and Performance, discusses the topic of application observability. We will learn about Python logging systems, how to monitor application metrics and perform distributed transaction tracing. We will also learn how to scale simple observability practices to large-scale distributed systems.

Chapter 13, Code Optimization, discusses the basic rules of optimization that every developer should be aware of. We will learn how to identify application performance bottlenecks and how to use common profiling tools. We will also learn common optimization techniques and strategies that can be easily applied in many situations once you know where the bottleneck is.