In the early days of C, you’d occasionally see someone — probably a former Pascal programmer — write something like this: #define BEGIN { #define END } This would usually initiate complaints about ...

Python, for all its power and popularity, has long lacked a form of flow control found in other languages—a way to take a value and match it elegantly against one of a number of possible conditions.

If you’ve ever written any Python at all, the chances are you’ve used iterators without even realising it. Writing your own and using them in your programs can provide significant performance ...