It seems to me if you want to write code like this, you shouldn't write it in Python. Python has much simpler, built-in ways to do most of the things he's suggesting. For instance, he says "good" for this code:
reduce(operator.add, map(len, ss))
No! The simpler (and more efficient, as it doesn't have to build a list of results!) way to do that is using the built-in sum() with a generator expression:
sum(len(s) for s in ss)
The rest of the slides are full of similarly-complex idioms. Another one:
def square_sum(a, b):
return sum(map(lambda x: x**2, range(a, b+1)))
Please, no! Generator expressions are there for a reason. Much simpler and much more efficient would be:
def square_sum(a, b):
return sum(x**2 for x in range(a, b+1))
In fact, most places you see map() in Python can be rewritten as generator expressions.
For stuff like functools.partial, in simple cases, isn't it clearer to just write this?
def debug(message):
log('debug', message)
I like his use of operator.itemgetter/operator.methodcaller, though. They're useful for sort keys and stuff, and faster and often clearer than lambdas.
Also: namedtuple is great instead of "using classes as attribute containers".