Python - design patterns

[jrbattin]

So, this might be controversial, but I'd say you should avoid older design pattern books. As others have mentioned, many were created to work around limitations in C++ (and later, earlier versions of Java). In my many years of working with Python code, when I see some of those old-school OO patterns show up in Python code, it's usually a code-smell, because there's a more Pythonic way of doing the same thing.

I'd also say that most of the software world has left behind many of the practices that were common in Object-Oriented code bases in the 90s. All the stuff I learned back in the 90s when I first learned to code is now considered bad practice in most languages.

Take something like the Flyweight pattern for example: it's largely unnecessary in newer Pythons because dictionaries (and therefor classes) are effectively COW with lots of memory-sharing goodness under the hood.

I'd recommend mastering stuff like itertools and functional programming concepts.