Summary

This chapter presented the best syntax practices related with classes. It started with basic information on how to subclass built-in types and call the method from superclasses. After that, more advanced concepts of object oriented programing in Python were presented. These were useful syntax features that focus on instance attribute access: descriptors and properties. It was shown how they can be used to create cleaner and more maintainable code. Slots too were featured, with an important note that they should always be used with caution.

The rest of the chapter explored the vast topic of metaprogramming in Python. The syntax features that favor the various metaprogramming patterns such as decorators and metaclasses were described in detail with some examples taken from real-life code.

The other important aspect of metaprogramming in the form of dynamic code generation was described only briefly as it is too vast to fit in the limited space of this book. However, it should be a good...