Recently I have been reading a lot of Python code and noticed several improvements of the language that are really useful and wished that I had knew earlier since some of the changes were added to the Python language specification back from Python 3.5.
One improvement is the Type Hints (PEP 484, implemented in Python 3.5). It allows developers to add a type after a function parameter and a return type, which allows the code reader or another developer to understand what types are intended for the parameters. There is no checking of the actual parameter types being passed. The following example from the PEP 484 page explains its usage.
def greeting(name: str) -> str:
return 'Hello ' + name
Another nice improvement is the new string formatting method introduced in Python 3.6 under “Formatted string literals.” It allows one to add Python variable values (or even calls) to a string object. Previously one has to use the “.format()” method to format a string. The example below explains how convenient it is now with the method.
def greeting(name: str) -> str:
return f'Hello {name}'