Exploring Functional Programming in Python With Bruce Eckel

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Would you like to explore the functional programming side of Python? What are the advantages of this approach, and what tools are built into the language? This week on the show, author Bruce Eckel talks about functional programming in Python.

Bruce is the author of several programming books, including Thinking in Java, Thinking in C++, Thinking in Python, Atomic Scala, and most recently, Atomic Kotlin. He’s been an explorer of programming languages over his career. Functional programming—with its lack of side effects, its transparency, and its potential for parallelization—has recently caught Bruce’s attention.

Bruce’s talk “Making Data Classes Work for You” at PyCon US 2022 explored the idea of the invariance of objects.

We also discuss his next book project, the Python community, and his affection for “un-conferences”. Bruce is hosting the upcoming Summer Tech Forum in Crested Butte, Colorado, this August.

Course Spotlight: Using Data Classes in Python

Data classes were introduced in Python 3.7. When using data classes, you don’t have to write boilerplate code to get proper initialization, representation, and comparisons for your objects.

Topics:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:15 – Musicians as programmers
00:03:40 – Happy Path Programming Podcast
00:04:19 – The essence of functional programming
00:10:55 – Making Data Classes Work for You - PyCon US 2022 talk
00:15:14 – What are things that have drawn you to Python?
00:17:39 – More than just a scripting language
00:21:35 – Consulting with companies
00:23:40 – Video Course Spotlight
00:25:04 – The frozen flag in a data class and __post_init__
00:29:02 – Invariance and functional programming
00:31:02 – How do you see it changing your programming?
00:34:49 – Not forcing an “approach” to Python
00:38:46 – Writing style in programming and books
00:42:31 – Who has been the intended audience for your books?
00:45:26 – Educational debt
00:46:50 – Python’s community
00:51:03 – New book about concurrency
01:00:51 – Winter and Summer Tech Forums
01:07:23 – Conference precautions and safety
01:08:51 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
01:11:40 – What do you want to learn next?
01:12:23 – How can people follow the things you do?
01:13:13 – Thanks and goodbye

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