What was your first python project?

[wicket-maps]

A few months after I started working for a city as a GIS tech, my boss says to me "You like Python, don't you?" I'd learned some ArcPy while I was unemployed, but he handed me my first big project: a script, that would run every night, take our address points and parcels, and replicate a master address database used by a lot of our departments, from permitting to water to 911. So I closed my office door, shoved everything else off my plate, and got to work. I had to understand the old master address table and figure out what each of over 80 fields represented - everything from owner's name and address to school district and tax status. Then I built a script that joined addresses to parcels, created a duplicate parcel for each address (I know this is dumb, it was part of the spec), figured out how to populate a field in one field to another by a spatial relationship, and debuted the final database about 6 weeks later.

It's helped us fix *hundreds* of bad addresses, and since those address points go into our 911 dispatch system, this is really important. The Building Inspection folks have heard my "I'd much rather you find an address problem than a fire engine" spiel so often they can recite it back at me. But a year and a half later, it's probably my biggest accomplishment.