concept encapsulation in category python

This is an excerpt from Manning's book Practices of the Python Pro. Login to get full access to this book.

You’ve already seen that organizing your code into functions, classes, and modules is a great way to separate concerns, but you can also use these techniques to separate complexity in your code. Because it’s difficult to remember every detail about your software at all times, in this chapter you’ll learn to use abstraction and encapsulation to create levels of granularity in your code so you can worry about the details only when you need to.

Encapsulation is the basis for object-oriented programming. It takes decomposition one step further: whereas decomposition groups related code into functions, encapsulation groups related functions and data into a larger construct. This construct acts as a barrier (or capsule) to the outside world. What constructs are available in Python?

Figure 3.5. By decomposing a system into small parts, you can encapsulate behaviors and data into isolated pieces. Encapsulation encourages you to reduce the responsibilities of any given portion of code, helping you avoid complicated dependencies.