The Adventures of A Python Script

3:45pm - 4:10pm on Saturday, October 5 in PennTop North

Dema Abu Adas

Slides:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YmPzG4p6ejUjSe6lfclUbsPtPLJmSEpH06THAXu5OIc/

Watch:

https://youtu.be/KkwBlOTnXgA

Description

Have you ever wondered what happens between the time you run helloWorld.py and the terminal prints out “Hello world”? I will be sharing the wonderful and interesting process of how the Python interpreter works from the Python source code to the compilation of bytecode.

Steve Yegge, a programmer and blogger who has a plethora of experience in operating systems, once noted the importance about compilers by stating, “If you don’t know how compilers work, then you don’t know how computers work”. This talk will share an overview of how CPython works from lexxing to compiling as well as how the abstract syntax tree (AST) works. At the end of the talk, you’ll be able to understand the general concept of the abstract syntax tree (AST) and how creating a interpreter can additionally benefit you in ways unrelated to the actual compilation such as linting and debugging.