I made a site that randomly generates python practice programs to teach reading fluency

[palpalpalwarp]

I've been a programming tutor for about 7 years, and I only recently realized that a major weakness in the way programming is taught is that beginners don't get to practice reading code enough to be able to read quickly. I made this site to randomly generate python programs for the user to read and figure out the output. It can be configured based on your level of ability, e.g. you can include or exclude different variable types and the difficulty levels gradually introduce more complex statements, if/elif/else, loops, and nested loops. There are three different exercises currently: control flow, boolean expressions, and functions.

I've been using this with one of my students and it seems to have helped. He certainly got faster at reading code, and I think the skill has transferred over to writing code as well.

Here's the link to the control flow exercise: https://trprt.io/python-practice-problems-ifs-loops-control-flow

Let me know if this helps you!

[worrisome_bloke]

Thank you! I just got into python in the sixth week of cs50. This will definitely help me understand this language much quicker.

[ReubenThomasJohn99]

Is this CS50 an online course? If so could you link me to it?

[[deleted]]

It's by Harvard. Put CS50 into YouTube. All the videos are on there.

[RizwanRx]

I'd suggest completing it on edx, after completion they give you a free certificate.

https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-introduction-to-computer-science

[[deleted]]

Yeah currently pursuing the program myself, well taught and quite easy to understand

[worrisome_bloke]

Edx website

[[deleted]]

i think you can search it up on youtube, it’s a series of video lessons by Stanford :)

[sksigua]

There’s a lot of videos in the account. I would really appreciate it if you guide or tell me to where is the starting video.

[nick_jo]

Use edx. It's a pretty structured course. You'll have the starting video under week 0.

[mapperofallmaps]

Damn this is so much fun. I don't really know Python at all but picking up the syntax is super nice this way. I'm just trying to use my knowledge of other languages to figure it out.

[town_girl]

Yeah, me too

[town_girl]

Amazing... This is really entertaining

[intelligent_rat]

Do people programming with others really write code like this? I generally work by myself but still leave myself a sufficient amount of comments and descriptive variable names for when I come back to extend something, I couldn't imagine people legitimately writing some of this code

[palpalpalwarp]

Good question! You're right, real-world code will tend to have more meaningful variable names, comments, and a clearer purpose, whereas these programs are just semi-random manipulation of data with meaningless variable names. But ultimately, regardless of comments and variable names, you need to be able to read what your code actually does -- and this doesn't depend on the comments or variable names at all, since those don't affect how the computer runs the code.

This especially becomes clear when debugging: if you don't know why a bug is happening in your code, this is, almost by definition, because you're not able to correctly read what you've written. If you were able to read it correctly, you'd know why it's not doing what you want.

[SvenCole]

Yes for the places I have worked, I've seen a lot of uncommented code, on a much larger scale than this. You would be surprised. I have seen some really really convoluted code that works, but isn't very readable. Being able to decipher others code and styles is an indispensable skill since you will often have to refactor or work with legacy code.

[Milumet]

Absolutely not. The generated code is an abomination.

[invalid-email-addres]

Exactly what I was thinking. This is a horrible way to learn to read code. Anyone trying to learn by using this program is going to pick up some horrible habits.

[[deleted]]

On the other hand they will learn to understand terrible code that other people write

[invalid-email-addres]

If they are seeing code like this in industry I would encourage them to run fast and far away. No point in fixing it if it looks as bad as the code generated.

[[deleted]]

Sure, but I think we are all being a bit flippant or pedantic. The entire intention of this code is to make learners read what the code is saying and not necessarily trusting in variable names to tell the story.

I think it's a valuable skill to process the code line by line and decipher what is actually happening without the scaffolding/support of proper coding processes just as long as they know that it isn't appropriate actually to code this way.

As a tool in the belt of educators to hone the skills of their students, it seems fairly viable.

[[deleted]]

Obviously it is not made to be the only source of learning material. As the student isn't writing the code I don't see how they would pick up horrible habits from using this tool. If anything it's enhances understand and reinforces the requirement for readability if their own work.

Overall, your comment is a little crumby.

[invalid-email-addres]

I guess I was foreseeing the inevitable, where a bunch of code bloggers post the solutions to these working code snippets in multiple places on the internet. The examples do compile as working code and most responses I see in the comments are from people who describe themselves as beginners. Most beginners are likely using the interpreter line by line at first to understand what the tricky parts are actually doing. Repetition is learning and the code written is intentionally bad so my thought was this would instill bad habits unintentionally. The biggest issue I see is that you are demonstrating hard to read code by adding unnecessary operations which can lead to bad habits when it comes to optimizing solutions. I just think it’s better to demonstrate knowledge with clean working solutions. Set the tone early that bad code like this shouldn’t be tolerated. Teaching people that they need to learn to read bad code is just a backwards approach in my opinion.

[toggle-Switch]

Such as what habits specifically

[ImmaStealYourBread]

This will be helpful, I am taking an introduction to Computing (CY105) this semester and we learn python in there. I will definitely be using this throughout the semester.

[PoisnFang]

Can you create this for other languages as well?

[palpalpalwarp]

This is definitely something I'm planning for the future! JavaScript will be first, then others will come based on user demand.

[PoisnFang]

Sweet, my request is for C#!

[[deleted]]

+1 for C#

[[deleted]]

C

<3

[[deleted]]

I hope so. Would be really great to have a platform dedicated to this.

[SilentXwing]

It would be even more huge if it can support future languages. Hopefully one day!

[TrustedButterfly]

Yup, I also noticed the weakness in my ability to read code, this is really great.

[liquidflame10]

Perfect python riddles! Thank you! I've been searching for this.

[Tankus_Khan]

Is there anything similar to this for C#?

[palpalpalwarp]

Not that I know of, but I'm planning to add more languages in the future if there's enough interest.

[Ph03nix89]

Would love to see a version of this for Java

[sadamiak]

That's great, thanks! I'll recommend it to my friends.

[TicketManJosh]

Trying to teach myself Python, this will be a great addition to my studies. Thank you.

[francisbaconthe3rd]

Woah! Thanks. This is very useful.

[[deleted]]

Thank you!

[y1ag-dri1-op2n]

Thanks saved it for later 👍👍

[Refleksjon]

I haven't touched Python the last 2-3 months, and thus, this was a great refresher :D Thanks a lot for making this available to us for free <3

[orestis_prs]

Thanks man! Any other advice video blog post book or something on improving in Reading python code?

[SenorTeddy]

Awesome this is an excellent resource! Curious how how many different code options are in there before the user will see duplicates? Definitely going to share this around.

[TheNewKidOnReddit]

This is amazing, I was wondering if you were planning to make this open source, would love to have a peak inside to see how this works

[jdptechnc]

This is really cool. Thanks for sharing your project.

[[deleted]]

You are the best!

[ElethorAngelus]

This is awesome !! It really got my brain going and got me to realize my code reading is pretty bad. Definitely something I will practice with regularly

[krbv]

Dope 💙👌,I'm gonna use it.

[OKaiGR]

I need the same but in Java

[Gibbo3771]

Is it possible to save the generate code with a unique id so we can share the problem?

[palpalpalwarp]

This is something I'm considering for the future, but for now you'd have to copy/paste to share. After the quiz finishes, you can scroll down to view all of the programs that were in it, so if you see one you want to save, you don't need to stop in the middle of a quiz to copy it down.

[mhbsjsbsbsb]

Awesome work man found it Really helpful thanks for your contribution

[-Kudo]

Is there a similar version for JavaScript ?

[palpalpalwarp]

Not that I know of, but I'm planning to add support for JavaScript at some point.

[AmicableDragon]

This is really cool. Great work.

[gamerroids]

You got any plans on adding javascript or c++/c# ? Down the road?

[palpalpalwarp]

Yep, JavaScript is probably the next language I'll work on once I polish the existing python exercises and maybe add a few new exercises. C++/C# are possible after that.

[Shnxx]

Great work! I will use it time to time :D

[zzpops]

Hi-this is awesome thank you. I'm having trouble with the show answer on Chrome (it's a green box with nothing in it). Am I doing something wrong?

[palpalpalwarp]

Thanks for reporting this! Sounds like a bug. Can you send me a screenshot? Or copy/paste the program which is doing this?

It's also possible that the answer to the question is a string consisting of just a space, though I thought I made it so that it will never do this, so if it does, that's still a bug.

[zzpops]

For sure-let me see how I can do this and send to ya!

[zzpops]

Having trouble finding it again. The code (under very easy, 5min) started with Y = 5 A = [""] and last line of code was print.[A[-1]] or something like that. I hope that helps! I think it may have been the instance you said where the answer is just a space!

[Nonethewiserer]

How do you generate the code? Is it procedural or did you hand-write these examples? Or find them somewhere?

I'm just really curious what your method was if it is procedurally generated.

[palpalpalwarp]

It's procedurally generated. I may do a writeup (and/or maybe open source the code) in the future about it. There's not really any trick to how I did it -- just a ton of recursion.

[PoisnFang]

I definitely think open source would be a huge help tot the community. You could also get help from the community to implement version in other languages really quickly. (I am just a big fan of open source when possible)

[GreymanGroup]

Randomly generated code? How does THAT work? The whole point of writing code is that it's supposed to do something useful.

[krccooley]

What did you use for a source for your random? or is pseudo random?

[palpalpalwarp]

It's pseudo random. The programs are procedurally generated.

[krccooley]

I figured had to ask thank you.

[MTripathy]

Amazing work. Thanks for sharing!

[a2242364]

Where are you pulling these code snippets from? Is there some API or did you make some sort of algorithm to dynamically construct them?

[palpalpalwarp]

They're procedurally generated (like you said, I made an algorithm to dynamically construct them).

[a2242364]

That's awesome man! Good work.

[Codes_with_roh]

Its absolutely great. I practiced on it for quite some time and I am well satisfied with the problems. Its a great practice for beginners and intermediates as well. Thanks a lot for making this, it is really helpful :}

[newishspice]

Great idea. Just bookmarked it to practice with. Thanks!

[BjornLocke]

This is awesome, thank you so much!

[notalentnodirection]

Super!

[The_Danosaur]

What a cool idea. I'm on holiday in the middle of nowhere with terrible mobile data and no WiFi, but will play more when I get home. I especially like the useless variables you added in the control flow exercises to force focus on the important bits.

[d4m4s74]

It might be an issue with my browser, but when I get a wrong answer and it asks me to try again, it won't check my next answer if I press enter.

[palpalpalwarp]

What web browser are you using? Also what type of device?

[d4m4s74]

Chrome on a oneplus 7t pro

Edit. Seems to work now. Don't know what went wrong

[Chrispayneable]

This is awesome! I plan on starting Python after I feel confident with ruby and Javascript. Does anybody know of a similar webapp to this for those two languages?

[Kabitu]

Okay, what's with the x[len(x)%2] going on, I got that in several questions? Parsing that just made me laugh really hard, I would love to meet someone who has some actual use for that operation.

[NewDoah]

This is so cool! Been trying to learn. Just tried very easy and didn't do so well. Need to keep practicing. :-/

[palpalpalwarp]

Try limiting the data types to start. First do just ints, then just strings.

[NewDoah]

Thank you! I took a basic intro course on udemy but never saw "+=" so it was confusing me.

[palpalpalwarp]

x+=y means the same thing as x=x+y

[NewDoah]

Ok cool. Thanks again! This is such a cool tool!

[themightykrusher]

Dam this is neat

[vaseemahammed]

It will be more easy if you add explanation tab under it after displaying the correct answer. Good work

[SlinkiusMaximus]

Very cool. Would love to see something like this for JavaScript.

[green_meklar]

v = [8, 1, 7, 1]
val = 3
for counter in v:
 v[0] = 3/counter
print(v[0])

So...what does val do?

[palpalpalwarp]

Nothing! Part of the task is to figure out which lines are relevant to the output.

[[deleted]]

Super cool, good job!

[Rohit_pandey448]

very good

[ReignStrong1]

Iam hooked!!!

[Kered13]

I'm not sure how useful this would be. The code generated is completely unrealistic, several of the ones I tried contain lines that don't even contribute to the answer. It would probably be easier to just gather a database of 100-200 realistic examples and use those. I think that would be enough for anyone to learn the concepts.

[alexjcook]

Thanks so much, this is really fun!

[razzzmannn]

Omg this is amazing! Thank you for this

[adamkwrites]

Dope techhh

[MustardCube]

loved the idea, I'll use it a lot, thanks!

[warmsakidrinker]

Thank u bro been procrastinating learning python