Python -O won’t magically make every script faster, but in the right workloads it’s a free win—here’s how to test it safely.

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.

Python is best thought of as a dynamic but strongly typed language. Types aren’t associated with the names of things, but with the things themselves. This makes Python flexible and convenient for ...