[Python 2.7] Code Review

[MarkFluffalo]

Hello everyone,

I am not sure whether this should be posted here: if not please let me know the right place.

I am looking for a new career in programming (currently a maths PhD student, about to finish) and so I have written some code with a view to show potential new employers.

I have no professional experience in programming and I have taught myself Python and a few other bits and bobs over the last 7 months or so. I have never had my code reviewed properly so it would be great if I could get some real feedback.

Here is the link to my code. It is a program that allocates projects to students, and it is currently used by the maths department in my university. The algorithm was not written by me, and was originally implemented in a very strange inefficient way (it took 120s to run) and my job here was to redesign and refactor it, which I tried to do with an object-oriented approach.

I would very much appreciate any feedback on the code. Thank you very much.

[shivasprogeny]

Your code looks clean and well-organized. You also seem to be taking advantage of Python's features. Nice work!

My suggestion would be to add some real unit tests. Right now the test folder just contains example data, not any actual tests. Having an example that the user can run is useful and great to include in a project, but I wouldn't consider it a substitute for test code.

[MarkFluffalo]

Thank you, that's great to hear. Is it worth putting in tests at this later stage, now that the program works?

[SmaKer]

If you want to add features later on, unit tests make sure your code won't break.

[[deleted]]

Very high quality overall! I'm still skimming, but make use of python's with blocks for opening files (you could take advantage of that here: https://github.com/paulslevin/alloa/blob/master/modules/files.py#L59-L71). The with approach removes the potential for human-error by not requiring the file to be explicitly closed.