Saturday 11:30 a.m.–noon

When the abyss gazes back: staring down Python's surprising internals

David Wolever

Description

Python's fantastic until it isn't. This talk dives into some of the surprising implementation details of CPython, then explains exactly how they could be discovered from first principles. Attendees will leave with some dangerous Python trivia, and the tools they'll need to uncovery their own trivia when surprises strike. The talk takes a deep dive into a StackOverflow question asking why `"x" in ("x", )` is faster than `"x" == "x"` (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28885132/why-is-x-in-x-faster-than-x-x/28885213#28885213), including a discussion of `dis.disassemble`, the Pyhton stack machine, and reading the CPython source. If time permits, there will be other fun examples, a whirlwind tour of debugging, and a couple of homework assignments.