Anyone who has mastered the basics of Python but wants to take their skills to the next level should read this marvellous book. Full of insights and practical examples, it is characterised by the author's trademark style of clarity, attention to detail, good humour and erudition. The book covers much ground and is a surprisingly easy read considering the topics it tackles. The acid test for me of a technical book of this nature is if I keep it on my desk to refer to whilst I am programming and this one passes with flying colours. Highly recommended
TL;DR You probably know 99% of things covered in this book if you did back-end Python for more than 2 years.
What I expected to find: python-specific design patterns, performance optimization tips, complex flows and DB/concurrency tips. That’s what experienced Python developers usually struggle with and definitely will use some help/tips/guides.
Instead this book starts and ends with rudimentary “trainee -> junior” language-specific features documentation. Like using generators/decorators/logging and writing basic tests.
Not that this book is bad, I did found a couple of minor things I have not used previously, but it definitely not lives up to “patterns & development strategies” mentioned in the title.
A good book for beginner - intermediate python developers. If you are an experienced one, you can safely skip it.
A few takeaways:
- There is really no mention of the "development strategies" advertised in the subtitle of this book. - Chapter 3 has some overly complex examples of list comprehensions and generator expressions, but I think the author does it to show what's possible in Python, so I think it's ok. - Chapter 5 has the most succinct and clear explanation of Python decorators. I really liked it. - Chapter 7 describes a few design patterns and implements them in Python: simple factory, factory method, observer. - A few good general tips here and there, but nothing new if you have a couple of years of experience in any programming language (not necessarily in Python). - 2 entire chapters dedicated to string formatting and logging. You are better off reading the official Python docs or a couple of blog posts here.