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Effective Software Development
Effective Python: 59 Specific Ways to Write Better Python
Each item in Slatkin s "Effective Python" teaches a self-contained lesson with its own source code. This makes the book random-access: Items are easy to browse and study in whatever order the reader needs. I will be recommending "Effective Python" to students as an admirably compact source of mainstream advice on a very broad range of topics for the intermediate Python programmer. " Brandon Rhodes, software engineer at Dropbox and chair of PyCon 2016-2017" It s easy to start coding with Python, which is why the language is so popular. However, Python s unique strengths, charms, and expressiveness can be hard to grasp, and there are hidden pitfalls that can easily trip you up. " Effective Python " will help you master a truly Pythonic approach to programming, harnessing Python s full power to write exceptionally robust and well-performing code. Using the concise, scenario-driven style pioneered in Scott Meyers best-selling "Effective C++, " Brett Slatkin brings together 59 Python best practices, tips, and shortcuts, and explains them with realistic code examples. Drawing on years of experience building Python infrastructure at Google, Slatkin uncovers little-known quirks and idioms that powerfully impact code behavior and performance. You ll learn the best way to accomplish key tasks, so you can write code that s easier to understand, maintain, and improve. Key features include
Actionable guidelines for all major areas of Python 3.x and 2.x development, with detailed explanations and examples Best practices for writing functions that clarify intention, promote reuse, and avoid bugs Coverage of how to accurately express behaviors with classes and objects Guidance on how to avoid pitfalls with metaclasses and dynamic attributes More efficient approaches to concurrency and parallelism Better techniques and idioms for using Python s built-in modules Tools and best practices for collaborative development Solutions for debugging, testing, and optimization in order to improve quality and performance "
Actionable guidelines for all major areas of Python 3.x and 2.x development, with detailed explanations and examples Best practices for writing functions that clarify intention, promote reuse, and avoid bugs Coverage of how to accurately express behaviors with classes and objects Guidance on how to avoid pitfalls with metaclasses and dynamic attributes More efficient approaches to concurrency and parallelism Better techniques and idioms for using Python s built-in modules Tools and best practices for collaborative development Solutions for debugging, testing, and optimization in order to improve quality and performance "
227 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2015
381 people are currently reading
1,856 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
August 1, 2016
Nice short book full of Python tips and tricks. There're 59 subchapters, each one is independent. Topics vary from OOP to concurrency and parallelism.
Not intend for beginners, but a nice and easy home reading for an experience Python developer.
Pros:
- Concise
- Best practises
- Relevant topics
Cons:
- Too short
- Not realy an indepth material
- Some topics are too easy and well known (virtualenv, unittest)
Not intend for beginners, but a nice and easy home reading for an experience Python developer.
Pros:
- Concise
- Best practises
- Relevant topics
Cons:
- Too short
- Not realy an indepth material
- Some topics are too easy and well known (virtualenv, unittest)
April 9, 2018
A must-have when working with Python 2/3 codebases.
Although dated by now, it's still relevant except for "Concurrency and Parallelism", if you're writing Python 3.
With the newest improvements in Python 3 regarding asyncio and futures, there needs to be a revisited version of the book.
Either way, highly recommended one-two times read.
Along with "The Python 3 Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library)" the book compliment each other to an extent, however they both fall short at "concurrency and parallelism", where the Python 3 documentation excels.
Although dated by now, it's still relevant except for "Concurrency and Parallelism", if you're writing Python 3.
With the newest improvements in Python 3 regarding asyncio and futures, there needs to be a revisited version of the book.
Either way, highly recommended one-two times read.
Along with "The Python 3 Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library)" the book compliment each other to an extent, however they both fall short at "concurrency and parallelism", where the Python 3 documentation excels.
March 13, 2015
There is a surprising amount of meat to this book, considering how thin it is. I would recommend this book to Python developers of all experience levels, but note that if you are a beginner, some of the later chapters might be a little out of reach. Similarly to more experienced developers, nothing in the first two chapters should come as big news, except maybe where you disagree with some of the finer points ;).
On the whole I think it's one of those books I will reach for from time to time, for elegant examples of how to use some of the less common parts of the language, or just to be inspired by some very nice ideas.
The high points for me were the chapters on metaprogramming, with some of the clearest, most concise explanations on that topic I have so far encountered.
On the whole I think it's one of those books I will reach for from time to time, for elegant examples of how to use some of the less common parts of the language, or just to be inspired by some very nice ideas.
The high points for me were the chapters on metaprogramming, with some of the clearest, most concise explanations on that topic I have so far encountered.
September 6, 2020
Short, readable and actionable. This is the only book which actually makes Python somewhat palpable, by not sweeping its limitations under the rug or championing odd idioms like "the principle of least surprise". Lost a star because I cannot recommend Python as a language, as a book, this is excellent. Will read the sequel too ^_^
April 19, 2019
This is a great book to learn advance Python concepts. Though this one is not for beginners, but I believe this is the only book that really taught me how to write code in a pythonic way. Must read for someone aspiring to be an expert in python.
June 24, 2019
Very good, succinct python tutorial.
It's great intro for more advanced books like "Fluent Python".
It's great intro for more advanced books like "Fluent Python".
September 27, 2023
Nice tricks in there!
March 27, 2015
If you browse Amazon’s catalog for Python books, you end up with several pages of titles that introduce you to the language, those that get you from hello world up to classes and a little taste of the standard library. What a struggle for those that already know what a closure is to find something worth reading! Brett’s book is one of those that experienced developers hope to see showing up as on top of the results instead: a title that covers those lesser used features that teach you to write better, robust code.
This thin book, 250 pages only, is split into 59 recipes, short and concise reviews of real life scenarios that every Python developer faces. Each focuses on a specific problem and starts with a brief overview . Next, we find an inefficient, not Pythonic solution that most of the intermediate programmers would come up with to solve it. What follows is a discussion that gets the reader, step by step, from this initial solution to an elegant and robust one. Brett clearly explains the benefits and the issues raised by each intermediate solution. Finally, he sails us to the Pythonic way introducing features and techniques.
As stated, the book is not meant to be read by a beginner. If the reader does not have a strong Python knowledge, he will struggle. Concepts like comprehension lists, closures and decorators must be well understood already.
The small size of the book could fool the reader. It’s thin, but intense, plenty of things to learn. If the reader doesn’t get lost, by the time he gets to the back cover, he will certainly start developing better code.
A real pearl. Every Python developer should jealously own a copy.
Suggested readings:
Learning Python Design Patterns
Learning Cython Programming
As usual, you can find more reviews on my personal blog: Feel free to pass by and share your thoughts!
This thin book, 250 pages only, is split into 59 recipes, short and concise reviews of real life scenarios that every Python developer faces. Each focuses on a specific problem and starts with a brief overview . Next, we find an inefficient, not Pythonic solution that most of the intermediate programmers would come up with to solve it. What follows is a discussion that gets the reader, step by step, from this initial solution to an elegant and robust one. Brett clearly explains the benefits and the issues raised by each intermediate solution. Finally, he sails us to the Pythonic way introducing features and techniques.
As stated, the book is not meant to be read by a beginner. If the reader does not have a strong Python knowledge, he will struggle. Concepts like comprehension lists, closures and decorators must be well understood already.
The small size of the book could fool the reader. It’s thin, but intense, plenty of things to learn. If the reader doesn’t get lost, by the time he gets to the back cover, he will certainly start developing better code.
A real pearl. Every Python developer should jealously own a copy.
Suggested readings:
Learning Python Design Patterns
Learning Cython Programming
As usual, you can find more reviews on my personal blog: Feel free to pass by and share your thoughts!
September 30, 2018
Some really good advice in here, but the learning curve is strange. It seems to start with very simplistic ideas, and then steps up quite suddenly to ways to do better decorators. It then later on explains decorators but I didn't come away with a clearer idea of what they were, but I highly doubt that many people will have a full understanding of decorators prior to the book, but don't for example know how to add a __repr__() method to a class.
Also it spends way too long on APIs, which made the book feel too specific for its title. Apart from that, a worthwhile read
Also it spends way too long on APIs, which made the book feel too specific for its title. Apart from that, a worthwhile read
February 12, 2017
A good, but not perfect, text for the next level of Python programming. Unlike the Effective C++ books this is clearly based on (and which I loved), I found the book relatively slow going and the examples- particularly the trickier ones - a bit contrived. I am an experienced programmer who's new to Python and this wasn't a good fit.
October 3, 2018
For a long time, there was a big gap in the intermediate to advanced Python book space. There was Tarek Ziade's Expert Python Programming,a really good book that started aging as Python moved on. There were books on individual topics such as network programming or web development, but these were limited in scope and could not be recommended to people looking to advance their general knowledge of the language. Fortunately, this situation has now drastically improved, thanks to a number of new publications, among which this one can be counted. Others are Fluent Python and the Python Cookbook.
Effective Python consists of 59 concrete recipes for writing, well,effective code. The recipes are very varied, and range from the simplest things like looping and slicing, to more complex topics such as class metaprogramming. Every tip is discussed in depth with all relevant aspects, and there is ample sample code. The recipes are organized roughly around different topics such as Metaclasses and Attributes, Classes and Inheritance, Concurrency and Parallelism etc. The Python target is 3, as all code samples adhere to its syntax,but any differences to Python 2 are explicitly stated and discussed. Some recipes go more towards patterns: e.g. "Register class existence with metaclasses" explains how to use the metaclass feature to create a class registry by only subclassing. These chapters are really useful as they give concrete examples of how abstract features can be used to accomplish sophisticated functionality. Others remind the programmer to prefer certain features of the language in preference to others (e.g. when dealing with circular imports),whereas others deal with what could be called "community" aspects of Python prgoramming, as in how to write packages that are good citizens of the Python world of programming.
Despite having already read sample code, blog posts or book chapters on most of the topics, I was surprised by how useful some examples are, and the detail in which they are discussed. One example is the descriptor chapter, which explains a rarely used feature of the language. The chapter is nicely bookended by discussions of the property decorator and the special methods for attribute access,giving the user a very good overview of the various ways of controlling attribute access. Another really well-written chapter is the one on how to use queues to coordinate between threads. This chapter nicely explains how to properly use the Queue class, by first giving an example of how a job queue can be built inefficiently, and then explaining a much more efficient and elegant counter-example.
The Queue chapter is a part of the Concurrency and Parallelism topic. This topic, despite the really nicely executed treatment of threads,unfortunately ends up being the weakest part of the book, due to the very simple reason that there was so much change in Python in this area. The new asyncio package is not discussed at all, and the coroutines that are at the heart of this package are explained at a very low level, without a clear sense of why they would be useful for concurrency and asynchronous IO. As I mentioned in the beginning, this book is a very valuable contribution to the Python bookshelf, and is highly recommended to developers of all levels who want to refresh and cement their knowledge of this wonderful language.
Effective Python consists of 59 concrete recipes for writing, well,effective code. The recipes are very varied, and range from the simplest things like looping and slicing, to more complex topics such as class metaprogramming. Every tip is discussed in depth with all relevant aspects, and there is ample sample code. The recipes are organized roughly around different topics such as Metaclasses and Attributes, Classes and Inheritance, Concurrency and Parallelism etc. The Python target is 3, as all code samples adhere to its syntax,but any differences to Python 2 are explicitly stated and discussed. Some recipes go more towards patterns: e.g. "Register class existence with metaclasses" explains how to use the metaclass feature to create a class registry by only subclassing. These chapters are really useful as they give concrete examples of how abstract features can be used to accomplish sophisticated functionality. Others remind the programmer to prefer certain features of the language in preference to others (e.g. when dealing with circular imports),whereas others deal with what could be called "community" aspects of Python prgoramming, as in how to write packages that are good citizens of the Python world of programming.
Despite having already read sample code, blog posts or book chapters on most of the topics, I was surprised by how useful some examples are, and the detail in which they are discussed. One example is the descriptor chapter, which explains a rarely used feature of the language. The chapter is nicely bookended by discussions of the property decorator and the special methods for attribute access,giving the user a very good overview of the various ways of controlling attribute access. Another really well-written chapter is the one on how to use queues to coordinate between threads. This chapter nicely explains how to properly use the Queue class, by first giving an example of how a job queue can be built inefficiently, and then explaining a much more efficient and elegant counter-example.
The Queue chapter is a part of the Concurrency and Parallelism topic. This topic, despite the really nicely executed treatment of threads,unfortunately ends up being the weakest part of the book, due to the very simple reason that there was so much change in Python in this area. The new asyncio package is not discussed at all, and the coroutines that are at the heart of this package are explained at a very low level, without a clear sense of why they would be useful for concurrency and asynchronous IO. As I mentioned in the beginning, this book is a very valuable contribution to the Python bookshelf, and is highly recommended to developers of all levels who want to refresh and cement their knowledge of this wonderful language.
February 4, 2018
I've observed a curious inverse relationship between the length of computer books and their quality. As with program code shorter is usually better. The canonical examples remain the original C Programming book and the first LaTeX Manual. Both of these terse masterpieces put the blundering, bloated, tree killing, screen-shot-ware that pollutes our bookshelves to shame. Hence, when picking software books I first count pages: anything above two hundred pages is suspicious. Effective Python weighs in at 216 pages. It could be a bit shorter and bit a better but overall this is an excellent book. In the age of search engines and StackOverflow we don' t need excessive detail. We need ideas and Effective Python presents a few good ones.
October 13, 2021
Needless to say, this is by far the most effective book that completely changes my coding style of Python. Brett is an excellent teacher who makes surprisingly simple examples to illustrate his point in a concise and inspiring way. Beyond that, you'll master a bunch of pythonic tricks to give you an edge over people who don't read this book. My coding style has improved a lot by taking advice from this book. If you're a newbie in Python, this book will help you write code in a more professional and clear way.
March 21, 2018
This is a decent python book. Covers quite a few Python features and how to use them well. I enjoyed it and, after some practice, feel better-able to express myself elegantly in Python.
Where the book falls short is in having enough examples and and practice problems problems to know why/when to apply some of the more advanced Python features. Also, this seems to be target at Python 3.4/2.7, missing some newer Python 3 features.
Where the book falls short is in having enough examples and and practice problems problems to know why/when to apply some of the more advanced Python features. Also, this seems to be target at Python 3.4/2.7, missing some newer Python 3 features.
May 22, 2019
A 200 pages summary of best practices of Python coding in production. I like the format of the book. The author mentions 59 different practices, highlights the problems with and proposes a better approach. He doesn't just put the "best practice" out there. He takes the reader through a thought process of why that might be bad through illustration by example. I find it extremely helpful for people writing Python for anything production-level.
July 31, 2019
It can be difficult to find a programming book that matches your level of experience, especially after you've moved away from introductory material. I was pleased to encounter several concepts for the first time, even after using Python for personal projects and class work for nearly two years (and reading dozens of articles related to "intermediate" Python topics).
If you seek out Python best practices, or want to continue learning beyond the basics, this book won't disappoint.
If you seek out Python best practices, or want to continue learning beyond the basics, this book won't disappoint.
August 26, 2019
Great python book!
Most of the python books out there are either too theoretical or too practical. They just introduce the concepts but you don't really understand when to use it for real time. Like generators, classes, decorators ...etc
This book shows known problems and explain how to use python specific feature to write the most effective and readable code.
I really enjoyed that book and you can read small chapters (Items) at a time. I helped me to improve my coding skills.
Most of the python books out there are either too theoretical or too practical. They just introduce the concepts but you don't really understand when to use it for real time. Like generators, classes, decorators ...etc
This book shows known problems and explain how to use python specific feature to write the most effective and readable code.
I really enjoyed that book and you can read small chapters (Items) at a time. I helped me to improve my coding skills.
October 21, 2019
This book is exactly what the title says - very specific ways to write better python. If your daily output is measured by the functionality of python programs this is a very handy book to have. I've learned approaches that I didn't know before from the computational point of view (coroutines) and how python can be used for parallel(ish) computing.
I will keep this (or an upcoming updated edition) on my desk for reference.
I will keep this (or an upcoming updated edition) on my desk for reference.
March 27, 2020
This is a book I revisit. The topics range from beginner ("Know How to Slice Sequences") to advanced ("Concurrency and Parallelism").
Some items/ways are debatable. Eg, there are good arguments against "Item 49: Write Docstrings for Every Function, Class, and Module." However, in general the items/ways are not contentious.
For me, it was sometimes hard to follow along reading disjointed snippets of code, so I had to type out all code for some examples into a text editor.
Some items/ways are debatable. Eg, there are good arguments against "Item 49: Write Docstrings for Every Function, Class, and Module." However, in general the items/ways are not contentious.
For me, it was sometimes hard to follow along reading disjointed snippets of code, so I had to type out all code for some examples into a text editor.
March 5, 2023
Many of the 59 ways are not Python specific and can help you with other programming languages as well. As so often, when you know the topic already, the book offers enough details. If you are new to a topic, then it lacks the necessary depth. I am not a fan of having a wrong example first and then come up with something better, especially if it is not obviously false and the author does not explain enough why the first one should be omitted.
July 4, 2017
This book is a good overview of some tricks using Python 2 & 3. The author's examples, however, are typically not at all intuitive. I would recommend interested readers looking for another more intuitive book if she/he is interested in advancing their Python skill. For beginners, this is not a beginner friendly book any way, so I wouldn't bother.
January 31, 2018
Really good Python book. It's not as in-depth as something like Fluent Python, but it has a ton of helpful tips, presented in an easily digestible format.
If you're reading only *one* Python book, go with Fluent Python. But Slatkin's book is a great addition to any library.
I'd call this a true intermediate-level book on the language.
If you're reading only *one* Python book, go with Fluent Python. But Slatkin's book is a great addition to any library.
I'd call this a true intermediate-level book on the language.
October 7, 2018
I usually prefer books that give a conceptual overview versus those that are lists of specific tips, however this book seemed to accomplish both! It is a valuable intermediate resource that immediately provides ways to structure a new project, clean up an old one, or understand deeper aspects to how python works.
May 19, 2019
Effective Python, 59 Ways to Write Better Python by Brett Slatkin is a neat little book to help you hone your Python skills (both for 2 and 3). It consists of tips across various concepts, from useful built-in modules to documentation. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn some cool stuff to do with Python.
June 20, 2017
Short and concise, this book introduced a lot of new and interesting things about the Python language. It gave me a better understanding of certain concepts of the language and definitely made me a better programmer. There's a lot in this book a junior developer can learn from.
June 27, 2018
This is a great book. I read it once to see what it was about, but I'm going to have to reread it a few times to get the most out of it. I found several useful things on the first read though. Great info on the GIL in chapter 5.
August 16, 2018
Nice and usefull book. Easy to read.
It suits for developers with different experience level in Python. I like most of all the way to show the differences between Python 2 and Python 3.
It suits for developers with different experience level in Python. I like most of all the way to show the differences between Python 2 and Python 3.
February 24, 2019
There are some good tips about the Python idiom, however there is nothing too special if you are already an intermediate python developer or had to write some medium size application in a work environment. Anyway, I recommend the reading for everyone.
April 6, 2019
Good book to polish your Python skills
It contains examples easy to follow. This could be a reference book to quickly look for some patterns and recommend uses while programming with Python.
It contains examples easy to follow. This could be a reference book to quickly look for some patterns and recommend uses while programming with Python.
July 31, 2019
Broad set of tips
The book covers everything from best practices, architecture to tools. The book gives enough information to understand a given concept then references external documentation for in depth coverage.
The book covers everything from best practices, architecture to tools. The book gives enough information to understand a given concept then references external documentation for in depth coverage.
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