Writing Functions in Python

Some Python experience is needed since the course starts with docstrings and argument passing rather than basic syntax. It is best suited for Python users who already write scripts and want to level up the quality and structure of their code.

The first chapter covers docstrings, the DRY principle, the "Do One Thing" rule, and best practices for default arguments, giving you a framework for writing functions that are easy to maintain and share with a team.

Context managers handle setup and teardown automatically, such as opening and closing file connections. The second chapter shows you how to use them with the with keyword and how to build your own, including a timer and a read-only file opener.

Decorators let you modify a function's behavior without changing its code. The course dedicates two full chapters to them, covering closures, scope, metadata preservation, and how to write decorators that accept their own arguments.

The final chapter walks through practical decorator use cases including counting function calls, enforcing return types, adding timeouts, and generating HTML, all patterns that appear regularly in production Python codebases.

Data scientists and Python developers who want to write production-ready code rather than notebook scripts, particularly those preparing to deploy models or contribute to a shared engineering codebase.