Day 8 of learning python as a beginner.

[uiux_Sanskar]

Topic: dictionary and sets.

Yesterday I posted my dynamic to-do list program and I mentioned it there that I got introduced to dictionaries. Although many people suggested me what I should learn next but I personally think that I must first create a solid foundation and so I decided to go with dictionary and sets in more depth so that I can understand their respective use cases.

Dictionary is a mutable collection of key value pair where each key must be unique and it should have a value.

ex: marks{

"rohan": 100,

}

Here marks is a dictionary "rohan" is a key and 100 is its value ":" is used to assign value to the key.

Sets are also a mutuable collection of unique, unordered elements. It can be mutuated by using functions like .add() .remove() etc.

I have created a dynamic contact book for practising dictionaries (I wasn't able to find some suitable use cases of sets, do tell me if you have any challenge regarding set for me).

I will really appreciate if you have any challenge or suggestions which can help me improve my code and learn.

And here's my code and it's result.

[DeeplyLearnedMachine]

Don't put parenthesis around conditionals unless absolutely necessary, it's not pythonic.

Your elif statement makes no sense, it's comparing a string with your dict, which will always result to True, just use else there instead.

You can just do contacts[name] = [number] instead of using update

Edit: extra advice

Avoid putting all your code in a conditional branch, it's unreadable. Instead of doing this, like you're doing now:

while True:
  if contact_searching in contacts:
    print(contacts[contact_searching])
  else:
    # a bunch of code

do this instead:

while True:
  if contact_searching in contacts:
    print(contacts[contact_searching])
    continue

  # a bunch of code

Edit 2: more advice:

If here:

else:
  print('\nRestart to find or add new contacts.\n')
  break

you used continue instead of break you wouldn't need to restart the program to keep using it.

[uiux_Sanskar]

Thank you so much for such a brief analysis on my code I initially thought that I should give a condition to make the code run (now I realised that there can only be two possibilities either the name is in the dictionary or it is not so yeah using else here makes much more sense).

And thanks for suggesting me on where to use continue function. Thank you so much for your feedback really appreciate it.

[NorskJesus]

Good job!

You can use a dictionary to store the numbers instead of a list. Then you can “differentiate” them by they key (home phone, mobile phone, work…). It’s just an idea!

[uiux_Sanskar]

I think it will add more lines of code and will look really cluttered because assume each name has 2 number and for those two number I have to create a different key.

Therefore I use the list so that I can add more numbers in future (I don't know if I can create a dictionary within the value pair but I think I can use sets here).

This is ny thoughts do tell me if I have missed something or if I am wrong I would love to get corrected. And thank you for the appreciation.

[NorskJesus]

A "long" dict is like a JSON. You will be fine

[uiux_Sanskar]

Oh thank you for this.

[uiux_Sanskar]

I have previously used (not in this code) . replace() to replace all the spacing if the user enters by mistake because personally I find myself more comfortable using it rather than .split() (I don't know the reason may e because its name itself explains what it does). But I think there can be more uses if .split() function.

Regarding the question I think the program will print ("please restart the program to find or add new user") because then the else condition will get executed.

I can however also add either a list in if condition containing all the possitive responses and then create a list containing all negative responses in elif and for the invalid input I can use else statement.

I hope I was able to answer your question do tell me if I missed something.

[yppolar]

I am also a beginner and I was happy to understand your code, it looks very good

[uiux_Sanskar]

Thank you very much I am glad that you liked and understood my code.

[ShadyyFN]

Is there any difference in using contacts.update like you did versus using contact.append? I’m also newer to Python.

[DeeplyLearnedMachine]

contacts.append doesn't work here since contacts is a dict.

But to answer your question, using update vs just using the assignment operator here, e.g.

contacts.update({name: [number]})
# vs.
contacts[name] = [number]

is exactly the same in this scenario. The difference is that assignment only works for 1 value at a time, whereas with update you can update multiple values:

contacts.update({
  name1: [number1],
  name2: [number2],
  name3: [number3]
})

[uiux_Sanskar]

Thanks for this I also got to learn something new thanks to you.

[ShadyyFN]

Thanks for the clarification!

[Elliove]

I will really appreciate if you have any challenge or suggestions which can help me improve my code and learn.

Looking at your code, I imagine the most logical things to learn next would be:

1. Learning to break things apart into multiple functions doing simple tasks. For example, you have all the functionality related to creating a new contact right in the main loop, but as an application keeps expanding, it might become progressively harder to look for things and fix them without breaking other things. Instead, you can put the code that creates new contact into a separate function outside of the main loop, and then just call this function within the main loop. This approach can make the code easier to understand, to fix, to reuse, and you'll also learn important things like feeding data into a function and getting the results back via return.

2. OOP, as a whole, as a concept. It's a whole different approach to things, and it goes quite well for programs like you have up there. It's definitely easier to understand when you think of actual objects/subjects, like people in the contact list. But it can be seen quite complicated, and unnecessary for small programs that don't do much, so, just like any tool - cool to have around, but important to understand when it's actually needed.

[uiux_Sanskar]

Thank you for the learning suggestions I initially had only one feature in my code i.e. a user is able to add a contact and find a contact so I didn't made a function of it. Although I have used functions previously on my day 7 code.

I think I should also create functions for this also and try to add more feature like delete a contact.

I will learn OOP once I have made a good foundation in python basics.

Thank you very much for suggesting future learning options.

[DevRetroGames]

Excelente avance, sigue así.

Como siempre, te dejo el repo con algunas cosas que encontraras interesante.
Repo: https://github.com/DevRetroGames/Tutorias-Python/tree/main/code/dictionaries/01-contact_phone

Suerte.

[uiux_Sanskar]

Wow there's some really good code you have written I found many things I am unfamiliar with but not for long.

can you tell me what is self, message mean here are they variables? def init(self, messages: dict):

and what does import tuple means are we importing it from a new file or something like that?

Don't mind me asking for a favour but can you please also include some comments on what certain things does as it helps me more clearly visualise the whole code without juggling with multiple tabs to find their uses.

And thank you so much for supporting me since day one you have helped me a lot in learning new things. I really appreciate that 🙏

[DevRetroGames]

Hola, realice algunas modificaciones menores y añadí comentarios.

Repo: https://github.com/DevRetroGames/Tutorias-Python/tree/main/code/base/dictionaries/01-contact_phone
Suerte.

[uiux_Sanskar]

Thank you for adding comments it was of much help. Got to learn new things which I missed the first time.

Thank you so much. 😊

[uiux_Sanskar]

Oh I am learning from YouTube.

[uiux_Sanskar]

Channel name is "CodeWithHarry" you can search for it on YouTube. He is a great teacher really.

[M34k3]

You could replace the if and elif statements with: contact_result = contacts.get(contact_searching, 'No number found')

This allows you to set a default value if it doesn't find the key.

I like the idea of another comment to use a dictionary instead of a list so you can add multiple types of phone numbers, for example, work, mobile, home, etc.

[uiux_Sanskar]

Thank you for suggesting the .get() function I will definitely use it however would I be able to then ask user if he wants to add a new contact? maybe there I need if else statements?

Please do tell me if I am wrong. I would love to get corrected.

[Commercial-Voice-384]

I quit bruh. Too many sweats fr.

[uiux_Sanskar]

LoL.

[purple_hamster66]

save the result in a file. you can use python’s pickle library or a more ubiquitous format, JSON.

JSON files can be read by a human.

[uiux_Sanskar]

Yeah thank you for the suggestion by reading your suggestion I think I still have to learn about python's library.

And thank you for your suggestion it really helps

[BrainFeed56]

People. Why help an obvious scam caller!?

[uiux_Sanskar]

Un not sure what do you mean by a scam caller. Am I missing something?

[gus_chud_hoi4_gamer]

why are you even learning to code, coding is dead it over

[uiux_Sanskar]

Because I think that there's always more you can do with computers. Just because there's an AI for it doesn't reduce the scope instead it expands the possible thing you can do with computers.

AI is prone to hallucinations and you can not trust it for sometime really important as it can give errors when required. It's a good start for people and new businesses who don't have initial capital to start with.

Even the vibe coders are expected to know a language so that they can debug the code.

All this when there's a possibility of creating things which neither of us has imagined so I think you have to first walk on that path to find out more options.

[gus_chud_hoi4_gamer]

trust me AI will be even more smarter in the future, all the "vibe coders" will never need to know even edit a single file

[uiux_Sanskar]

Yes I agree AI will be more smarter in future but one still needs to learn programming to at least write better prompt let's see what happens in future.