Chapter 7. Python Object-oriented Shortcuts

Now let's look at some aspects of Python that appear more reminiscent of structural or functional programming than object-oriented programming. Although object-oriented programming is the most popular kid on the block these days, the old paradigms still offer useful tools. Most of these tools are really syntactic sugar over an underlying object-oriented implementation; we can think of them as a further abstraction layer built on top of the (already abstracted) object-oriented paradigm. In this chapter we'll be covering:

• Built-in functions that take care of common tasks in one call

• List, set, and dictionary comprehensions

• Generators

• An alternative to method overloading

• Functions as objects