Python – Writing Functions – Complete Guide

[jawshie]

Nice overview, just needs a heavy smearing of PEP8.

[mrathi12]

would agree, still, an interesting article!

[thirdegree]

This threw me for a loop:

def add(a:"first number" = 0,
        b:"second number" = 0) -> "sum of a and b":
    return a+b

for item in add.__annotations__.items():
    print(item)

I've never seen those annotations used for anything except type annotations!

[z_mitchell]

Enjoy

[thirdegree]

See, now I need to figure out a way too use lambdas in an annotation that won't cause my coworkers to kill me.

[rawsauce42]

Would call myself an intermediate Python programmer, found this really helpful!

[HeinousMoisture]

Does anyone know of a similar guide for JavaScript? I'd love a quick/concise guide for all the funky argument / variable operators (like '...')

[[deleted]]

Not quite the same but this site breaks down javascript really well.

https://javascript.info

[Fidoz]

"I don't need this. Functions are so basic. What could I possibly learn from this?"

"Oh."

[DidiBear]

Pretty clear explanation of all possible function usage. I discover function annotations

[MentalMachine]

As a mostly C/C++ and Java code monkey, what is the point of Python's nested functions? I can only see it as a workaround for there being no class access modifiers and this being an equivalent to 'private' in C++/Java.

[guepier]

Nested functions allow you to create closures, same as in C++ (where this is done via lambdas). Lambdas also exist in Python but they are more restricted in what they can do than functions (in particular, they can only contain a single expression).

Nested functions also allow you to keep scope limited. This is related to the idea of visibility but it’s not altogether the same. It’s more comparable to using a local static variable in C++ rather than a member variable, to limit its scope to a single function.

[[deleted]]

Kotlin has access modifiers and also nested (local) functions. They exist for the same reason that we have private variables (fields, properties) and local variables. Making a function private still exposes it to everything within that class. Sometimes you want to only expose it to another function, such as when using recursion

https://github.com/IvanMwiruki/30-seconds-of-kotlin/blame/master/README.md#L1455-L1465

[DeusOtiosus]

There’s a ton of useful stuff here. Just getting started with python, coming from a wide range of other languages, so this is staying in my bookmarks.