It’s Powerful

From a features perspective, Python is something of a hybrid. Its toolset places it between traditional scripting languages (such as Tcl, Scheme, and Perl) and systems development languages (such as C, C++, and Java). Python provides all the simplicity and ease of use of a scripting language, along with more advanced software-engineering tools typically found in compiled languages. Unlike some scripting languages, this combination makes Python useful for large-scale development projects. As a preview, here are some of the main things you’ll find in Python’s toolbox:

Dynamic typing

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Python keeps track of the kinds of objects your program uses when it runs; it doesn’t require complicated type and size declarations in your code. In fact, as you’ll see in Chapter 6, there is no such thing as a type or variable declaration anywhere in Python. Because Python code does not constrain data types, it is also usually automatically applicable to a whole range of objects.

Automatic memory management

Python automatically allocates objects and reclaims (“garbage collects”) them when they are no longer used, and most can grow and shrink on demand. As you’ll learn, Python keeps track of low-level memory details so you don’t have to.

Programming-in-the-large support

For building larger systems, Python includes tools such as modules, classes, and exceptions. These tools allow you to organize systems into components, use OOP to reuse and customize code, and handle events and errors gracefully.

Built-in object types

Python provides commonly used data structures such as lists, dictionaries, and strings as intrinsic parts of the language; as you’ll see, they’re both flexible and easy to use. For instance, built-in objects can grow and shrink on demand, can be arbitrarily nested to represent complex information, and more.

Built-in tools

To process all those object types, Python comes with powerful and standard operations, including concatenation (joining collections), slicing (extracting sections), sorting, mapping, and more.

Library utilities

For more specific tasks, Python also comes with a large collection of precoded library tools that support everything from regular expression matching to networking. Once you learn the language itself, Python’s library tools are where much of the application-level action occurs.

Third-party utilities

Because Python is open source, developers are encouraged to contribute precoded tools that support tasks beyond those supported by its built-ins; on the Web, you’ll find free support for COM, imaging, CORBA ORBs, XML, database access, and much more.

Despite the array of tools in Python, it retains a remarkably simple syntax and design. The result is a powerful programming tool with all the usability of a scripting language.