Descriptors are one of those things that many don’t even bother to learn because they look confusing.

Thankfully for you, I cracked the code and I can assure you they’re not confusing!

In this talk I will provide an example that shows how descriptors work and that will also motivate why they are useful and needed.

By the time we are done, you will be able to implement descriptors in your code and use them for practical purposes.

Outline

The talk will follow roughly these bullet points:

• introduction
• @property and getter methods
• the dunder method __get__
• a descriptor example
• identify a similarity between @property and __get__
• `@property.setter` and setter methods
• the dunder method __set__
• another descriptor example
• how to create general descriptors & the dunder method __set_name__
• explain why @property and descriptors look so similar
• give examples of situations where descriptors are needed
• if time permits, talk about some built-in descriptors