Python Fundamentals To Become a True Programmer, Part 1
The things you have to know — to improve your Python skills
The Python Path
Python has this charm to it. The crowds speak of it, almost romantically, how it is “just plain English.” It is so “simple and easy to understand” and the power of importing the fantastic modules of the open-source community — everything within your grasp.
Well, isn’t that true?
It is, no doubt about it, but that my friends is level 1.
Level 1 is the path each python developer goes through his way to become a real python developer, and I hope by the end of this article, to get you to a more advanced level and show you the needed path you must take.
“Knowing features doesn’t make someone an expert, understanding them do.”
At The Beginning
This article will progress over time, but I want to start with a better understanding of classes.
Classes are known as the blueprints of an object, and the init creates the object, or constructs it (a lot of building analogies comes in to play).
This definition is fair, but it leaves out an essential aspect of a python class.
What is this object?
This object you create will probably have attributes, and self operations, but python gives you much more, with the “dunder methods.”
The basics
Let us start with something simple — let’s say we need a class to represent a polynomial, it will probably look like this:
We want to have the ability to add or subtract them from another and even print them to the screen in a simple proper way, and here come the three most basic “dunder methods,” you add the appropriate methods, and you can use these operations!
If this looks completed because of the zip function, fear no more, the zip is just way to tie up two iterables, into a single iterable.
What most important for us to understand that SYNTAX DOES NOT MATTER, you realize that data model functions (“dunder methods”) allow you to operate on the object itself.
It is the crucial concept I’m putting out here, it’s starting simple, but it will get more interesting.
Level 3 — The World Is An Object
This saying is a common saying, since python 3, everything is an object, but what does this catch-phrase means?
Here is a typical example to illustrate the meaning of it. Let’s say we want to measure the time a function took to operate.
Now I’ve solved a local problem, what if I want to add it to 20 functions? This way is the wrong way, and it is not taking into account that everything in python is an object, including the function sub. I can take sub-function and modify it, that calling sub will add a time check on the function.
Step 5 — the core concept, step 7, is in a syntax way.
There is no difference between step 5 and step 7. It is the same; this is called a decorator, the decorator lets the programmer add functionality to his functions, without touching the core function itself.
More data on “args,” “kwargs,” and more right here:
Don’t be eager!
While this also hints the starting concept of article number 2 (and currently the last one planned). The next article will dig deeper into the cores and features of the language, and hopefully give you a better understanding of what python is, more than just some fancy imports and stuff that looks like this: I hope you enjoyed this article, I know I did, I wanted to squeeze in everything in one piece, but it felt too compact, I hope to see you in the next one, and I also hope this article gave you something new!
Here is something to read until part 2 of this post:
Thanks for reading!
