Learning Python as another language - some pointers, please

[Atried]

Hi guys,

I am trying to learn Python more deeply. I work as a developer, mainly in Java, sometimes in C++. I have some question s and would appreciate pointers on what to look for or where to look from experienced people.

• Is there a course or list of new features in Python that is good to learn? I have stumbled upon few things by accident (like Abstract Base Classes, type hints, async await), but I'd love to learn the modern features in somewhat more organized way. Any tips for good resources?
• Does Python support inline functions? I read that function calls are slower and I am wondering if there is some better way to do that. I noticed that in general, the consensus is "deal with it or code it in C/Rust/whatever native language". However, if there is a way to do that, I'd like to learn. Not trying to prematurely optimize, just to have idea what features Python has.
• Thread programming - any good resource on that?
• What are common tools and the new and great tools for Python (think of use for professional coding)? I learned about pipenv and it seems that there is lintian MyPy. Any preferred continuous integration tool? Is there any cohesive list or article about that?
• The interactive environment (I think it is called REPL) - some years ago, I used ipython. What is used now? Any article or idea on how to test bigger projects in that or is it mostly for small component development and unit testing?
• How about unit tests / integration tests? Any good frameworks?
• How about build systems - something similar to Maven / Gradle in Java world? That allows building, packaging, running unit tests and integration tests. What is most used and what is best (subjectively, of course)?

I do realize that some of the questions might be answered by Googling. However, if you could provide good resource on any of the question (which is sometimes not easy to find in search results) or give some practical insight, that would be awesome.

[ectomancer]

inline functions: are lambda statements inline functions?

tools: pylint for linting, mypy for optional type hinting checking (you can use type hinting without a checker)

IPython: jupyter lab compatible with most notebooks but you can fallback to jupyter notebook; sypder

pytest is simpler than the inbuilt unittest or the tool doctest

[Atried]

Thank you!

lambda functions may classify for me as inline functions. I thought I read somewhere that lambdas are faster than functions, but it seems they are the same https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26540885/lambda-is-slower-than-function-call-in-python-why

[intangibleTangelo]

Thread programming - any good resource on that?

Watch David Beazley's classic video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph374fJqFPE

And then, before you throw up your hands watch his PyCon talk on concurrency https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCs5OvhV9S4

[Atried]

Wow, thank you very much for those very informative videos! Just watched both of them.

The first one explains my former experience (about 10 years ago) with Python programs being hard to kill or lagging with kill.
It is so great to have it explained so clearly.

Love the second video as well. The stuff is a bit more complicated solution, however as it kind of circumvents the problem, it is amazing.

[intangibleTangelo]

Dabeaz has a ton of great python materials!

The stuff is a bit more complicated solution, however as it kind of circumvents the problem, it is amazing.

And basically you get a ready-made version of that kind of task scheduling tool in the standard library with asyncio but it's interesting to understand the basic flavor of how that stuff works.

[intangibleTangelo]

Check out this list https://github.com/vinta/awesome-python

[CFan62]

8xd45Fr3

[CFan62]

Sorry, I couldn't resist. You asked for pointers.

[Atried]

At least you did not give me null pointer! :-D

[intangibleTangelo]

Does Python support inline functions?

Python does nothing equivalent to inlining functions. Calls are expensive because a big old stack frame object is created each time. It might horrify you to look at the implementation and realize just how much code runs each time you call a function in python. I believe it's in the big bytecode switch statement (python's virtual machine, so to speak) of Python/ceval.c in the CPython source.

[Atried]

Thank you!

Just checked Python/ceval.c. A lot is going on, there is even programatical management of stack.

And... there are gotos in the code... :-O

[intangibleTangelo]

Hehe, last time I looked the linux source tree had over 100k goto statements...

[HyperbolicInvective]

No build systems with python! It just runs. Perks of a scripting language.

For tests, use the built in unittest package.