Years ago (around the Python 2.5 time frame) I wrote a draft manuscript foraPython User’s Reference that aimed at providing a middle ground betweenthe tutorial and the full language reference. The idea was to covereverything that was included in the language reference, but in a way thatwas designed to help Python developers understand what the interpreter wasdoing on their behalf, rather than being aimed at developers trying toproduce a compliant interpreter implementation.
That book deal never went anywhere, so I asked for the copyright on themanuscript to be returned, and donated the draft to the PSF. Converting theODF files to reStructuredText has been an idle thought ever since, but mymotivation to do so has dropped ever lower as the contents of the manuscriptbecome increasingly out of date.
So, instead, this page will host an ad hoc series of articles that dive deepinto some esoteric element of the Python language definition, and attempt toexplain it in ways that may be more intuitive than the official version.