Steven F. Lott
About the Author
Steven F. Lott has been programming since the 70s, when computers were large, expensive, and rare. As a contract software developer and architect, he has worked on hundreds of projects from very small to very large. He's been using Python to solve business problems for over 10 years.
Steven is currently a technomad who lives in various places on the east coast of the US. His technology blog is: http://slott-softwarearchitect.blogspot.com
I owe deep gratitude to Floating Leaf for all her support and guidance.
About the Reviewers
Mike Driscoll has been programming in Python since 2006. He enjoys writing about Python on his blog at http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/. He has co-authored Core Python refcard for DZone . Mike has also been a technical reviewer for various books of Packt Publishing, such as Python 3 Object Oriented Programming , Python 2.6 Graphics Cookbook , and Tkinter GUIApplication Development Hotshot . Mike recently wrote the book Python 101 .
I would like to thank my beautiful wife, Evangeline, for always supporting me. I would also like to thank my friends and family for all that they do to help me. I would also like to thank Jesus Christ for saving me.
Rman Joost first learned about open source software in 1997. He is the project manager of GIMP's user documentation. He has contributed to GIMP and Python/Zope open source projects for eight years. Rman works for Red Hat in Brisbane, Australia.
Sakis Kasampalis is based in the Netherlands, where he currently works as a Software Engineer for a location-based B2B provider. He is not dogmatic about particular programming languages and tools; his principle is that the right tool should be used for the right job. One of his favorite tools is Python because he finds it very productive.
Among the FOSS activities of Kasampalis is maintaining a GitHub repository that is related to implementing design patterns in Python, which are available at https://github.com/faif/python-patterns. He was also a technical reviewer of the book Learning Python Design Patterns , Packt Publishing .
Albert Lukaszewski, Ph.D , is principal consultant for Lukaszewski Consulting Services in southeast Scotland. Having programmed computers for over 30 years, he consults on the system design and implementation. Previously, he served as Chief Engineer for ACCESS Europe GmbH. Much of his experience is related to text processing, database systems, and Natural Language Processing ( NLP ). In addition to MySQL for Python , Packt Publishing , he previously wrote a column on Python for the New York Times subsidiary, About.com.
Hugo Solis is an assistant professor in the Physics department at the University of Costa Rica. His current research interests are computational cosmology, complexity, and the influence of hydrogen on material properties. He has wide experience with languages including C/C++ and Python for scientific programming and visualization. He is a member of the Free Software Foundation and has contributed code to some free software projects. Currently, he is in charge of the IFT, a Costa Rican scientific, non-profit organization for the multidisciplinary practice of physics (http://iftucr.org).
I'd like to thank Katty Sanchez, my beloved mother, for her support and vanguard thoughts.
www.PacktPub.com
Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book.
Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at > for more details.
At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.
http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com
Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Here, you can access, read and search across Packt's entire library of books.
Why Subscribe?
- Fully searchable across every book published by Packt
- Copy and paste, print and bookmark content
- On demand and accessible via web browser
Free Access for Packt account holders
If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access PacktLib today and view nine entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for immediate access.
Preface
This book will introduce you to more advanced features of the Python programming language. The focus is on creating the highest quality Python programs possible. This often means creating programs that have the highest performance or are the most maintainable. This means exploring design alternatives and determining which design offers the best performance while still being a good fit with the problem that is being solved.