Distilled Python: Features you must know to use it well

We are happy to announce that Luciano Ramalho will be joining us on Saturday to conduct a Python workshop.

Luciano is the author of the bestselling book Fluent Python (O'Reilly, 2015). Since 1998 he has deployed Python on some of the largest Web sites in Brazil. His speaking record includes PyCon US, OSCON, OSCON-EU, PythonBrasil, RuPy and an ACM Webinar that was attended by more than 900 people. Ramalho is a fellow of the PSF and co-founder of the Brazilian Python Association and of Garoa Hacker Clube, the first hackerspace in Brazil.

Python is one of the most popular and requested programming languages nowadays and there are good reasons for this.
It is the backbone of most applications in uprising fields like Data Science and the IoT.
But with its support of multiple programming paradigms, its compatibility with major platforms and systems, its robust standard library and a vast ecosystem of open source frameworks and tools the areas of application reach far further.
The syntactic rules of Python that allow readable and maintainable code make it a fun and productive programming language.

Here is what he plans to cover in the workshop:

TOPICS

• testing: doctests and pytest
• object references, `==` versus `is`, mutability
• text versus bytes
• functions beyond the basics: optional, variadic and named args, decorators
• duck typing, fundamental protocols, special methods
• essential utility methods: `repr`, `str`, `eq`, `len`, `bool`
• collections, iterables, unpacking, generators, itertools
• vectorized operations

FORMAT
Theory and practice driven by tests from the start.

AUDIENCE
Some experience with Python is useful but not required if participants
have significant experience with other languages. For best results,
take a look at one of these brief introductions:

• Python Tutorial: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/
• A Whirlwind Tour of Python: http://bit.ly/2EXQpCb

REQUIRED SOFTWARE
Participants should have Python 3.6 and a code editor/IDE installed on
their machines. We will install pytest at the beginning of the
workshop.

PRESENTER
Luciano Ramalho, author of Fluent Python (O'Reilly), and learning
generalist at ThoughtWorks.