some of the same terms used in the perl sidebar of while python still has much to offerthis trend threatens to negate much of its perceived advantageas the next section explains on "optionallanguage features included quote near the start of the prior about metaclasses not being of interest to of python programmersto underscore their perceived obscurity that statement is not quite accuratethoughand not just numerically so the quote' author is noted python contributor and friend from the early days of pythonand don' mean to pick on anyone unfairly moreoveri've often made such statements about language feature obscurity myself--in the various editions of this very bookin fact the problemthoughis that such statements really apply only to people who work alone and only ever use code that they've written themselves as soon as an "optionaladvanced language feature is used by anyone in an organizationit is no longer optional --it is effectively imposed on everyone in the organization the same holds true for externally developed software you use in your systems--if the software' author uses an advanced or extraneous language featureit' no longer entirely optional for youbecause you have to understand the feature to reuse or change the code this observation applies to all the advanced topics covered in this bookincluding those listed as "magichooks near the beginning of the prior and many othersgeneratorsdecoratorsslotspropertiesdescriptorsmetaclassescontext managersclosuressupernamespace packagesunicodefunction annotationsrelative importskeyword-only argumentsclass and static methodsand even obscure applications of comprehensions and operator overloading if any person or program you need to work with uses such toolsthey automatically become part of your required knowledge base too to see just how daunting this can beone need only consider ' new-style inheritance procedure-- horrifically convoluted model that can make descriptors and metaclasses prerequisite to understanding even basic name resolution ' super similarly ups the intellectual ante--imposing an obscenely implicit and artificial mro algorithm on readers of any code that uses this tool the net effect of such over-engineering is to either escalate learning requirements radicallyor foster user base that only partially understands the tools they employ this is obviously less than ideal for those hoping to use python in simpler waysand contradictory to the scripting motif all good things