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If you’re programming in Python, then you’re probably writing functions. The good news is that this is fairly straightforward; it’s not unusual to start writing functions in the first day of a Python course. But Python functions are also powerful and flexible, and that’s where things can get complex.
Underneath the basic syntax are a variety of capabilities that are easy to use, if you know where to look and how to think. This course is all about understanding Python functions, how they work under the hood, and how you can take advantage of this knowledge in your own programs.
Among other things we discuss in this course are:
– Functions as nouns, not just verbs
— treating functions as objects
– How arguments are mapped to parameters
– Working with Python’s local, global, and builtin variable scopes
– Writing functions that take optional arguments
– Dispatch tables, and how they can make your life easier
This course is based on the material that I teach on a regular basis at Fortune 500 companies around the world. It’s meant for someone who already has a good sense of Python’s fundamental data types and syntax, and who wants to write functions that are simpler(?) than “Hello, world” and which can take advantage of Python’s many sophisticated features. The course includes a wide variety of exercises, based on questions I’ve given to my corporate-training clients over the years. As you solve these problems, you’ll gain insights into how to write more efficient, readable, and idiomatic functions in Python.
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I’m a one-person company dedicated to improving your career via Python and related technologies. If you haven’t gotten value from any of my courses, then just tell me — and I’ll refund your money.
Reuven is a full-time Python trainer. In a given year, he teaches courses at companies in the United States, Europe, Israel, India, and China — as well as to people around the world, via his online courses.
Reuven created one of the first 100 Web sites in the world just after graduating from MIT’s computer science department. He opened Lerner Consulting in 1995, and has been offering training services since 1996.
In 2020, Reuven published “Python Workout,” a collection of Python exercises with extensive explanations, published by Manning. He’s currently finishing edits on “Pandas Workout,” a similar collection of exercises using the “Pandas” library for data analytics.
Reuven’s free, weekly “Better developers” newsletter, about Python and software engineering, is read by more than 30,000 developers around the globe. His “Trainer weekly” newsletter is popular among people who give corporate training.
Reuven’s most recent venture is Bamboo Weekly: Every Wednesday, he presents a problem based on current events, using a public data set. And every Thursday, he shared detailed solutions to those problems using Pandas.
Reuven’s monthly column appeared in Linux Journal from 1996 until the magazine’s demise in 2019. He was also a panelist on both the Business of Freelancing and Freelancers Show podcasts.
Reuven has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from MIT, and a PhD in learning sciences from Northwestern University. He lives in Modi’in, Israel with his wife and three children.
I send a full-length Python article to more than 30,000 people each week — on topics ranging from iterators to descriptors, variable assignment to sets, exceptions to command-line arguments. Join me, and get smarter about Python each week!