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Python 3 Object-Oriented Programming - Second Edition

You're reading from   Python 3 Object-Oriented Programming - Second Edition Building robust and maintainable software with object oriented design patterns in Python

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Product type Paperback
Published in Aug 2015
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781784398781
Length 460 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Dusty Phillips Dusty Phillips
Author Profile Icon Dusty Phillips
Dusty Phillips
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Table of Contents (15) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Object-oriented Design FREE CHAPTER 2. Objects in Python 3. When Objects Are Alike 4. Expecting the Unexpected 5. When to Use Object-oriented Programming 6. Python Data Structures 7. Python Object-oriented Shortcuts 8. Strings and Serialization 9. The Iterator Pattern 10. Python Design Patterns I 11. Python Design Patterns II 12. Testing Object-oriented Programs 13. Concurrency Index

Functions are objects too


Programming languages that overemphasize object-oriented principles tend to frown on functions that are not methods. In such languages, you're expected to create an object to sort of wrap the single method involved. There are numerous situations where we'd like to pass around a small object that is simply called to perform an action. This is most frequently done in event-driven programming, such as graphical toolkits or asynchronous servers; we'll see some design patterns that use it in Chapter 10, Python Design Patterns I and Chapter 11, Python Design Patterns II.

In Python, we don't need to wrap such methods in an object, because functions already are objects! We can set attributes on functions (though this isn't a common activity), and we can pass them around to be called at a later date. They even have a few special properties that can be accessed directly. Here's yet another contrived example:

def my_function():
    print("The Function Was Called")
my_function...
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