Description
Python's Dusty Corners
Presented by Jack Diederich
The talk will be a brief overview of all the features in python that you don't need to know about right up until the moment you do. The list includes how comparisons work, descriptors, iterators, context managers, namespaces, else clauses on for/while loops (suggested by Hettinger). The narrative of the talk is that these are features that you don't need and/or shouldn't use in your day-to-day code but that you need to keep in the back of your mind because other people's code and the stdlib do use them. As Alex Martelli pointed out in his wonderful talk "Abstractions as Leverage" you can't successfully function at one level of abstraction if you don't know what is going on at the next level down. This talk is a whirlwind tour of the next level down.