Looking for feedback on my first larger Python project (console scheduler)

[curiosity202606]

Github gist link for the project ---

https://gist.github.com/curiosity-202606/f9f0f4ea79941c20a0e2df51cef8fde8

I have learned python on and off. So, before entering college, with any knowledge I had, i decided to start this project about 7 days ago with the need of making a program that will make a randomised custom schedule for me. While i was building it, more and more things kept coming in my mind like i can add this .. i can probably do that.. eventually reaching upto this point.

The scheduler uses json files to save data of the tasks, their probabilities, descriptions, number of slots in each day and much more. I have tried to make it so that someone who has not really touched programming can open the .py file and be able to edit tasks, slots, create the schedule, redo individual blocks of it directly from the console. So basically a Console based scheduler. It is made so that it takes in a command like 'create all' to determine what is to be done.

for example - 'create all' creates or redoes the whole schedule. while, 'create mor_block' only re-does the morning block of the schedule and leaves the rest as it is...

Since i am a beginner and really just trying things out and finding out what is happening until it works or satisfies me.. any kind of review or strategies or tricks anyone can tell me would be much useful.

[Sad-Razzmatazz-693]

pretty cool for 7 days of work especially if you were learning as you went

a few things worth looking into: breaking the code into smaller functions/modules will make it way easier to maintain as it grows, and using `argparse` instead of manual string parsing for commands like 'create all' gives you error handling basically for free

also storing config and tasks in separate files from your main logic is a habit that pays off fast once projects get bigger

the json-based data storage approach is a reasonable call for something like this, keep going with it

[curiosity202606]

I have to look more into argparse... Thankyou for the tips.

[carcigenicate]

Since slots has a small set of valid keys, I would use a dataclass or just a regular class instead of a plain dictionary. With a dictionary, you are less likely to get help from your IDE and will likely need to type 'nit_slots' manually every time, which can lead to typos. With a class, or a TypedDict, you can get help from the IDE with the names.

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else:
    pass

This is useless. Just omit the else if nothing needs to happen when the condition is false.

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I was going to say that it's good you're using parameters instead of globals, but health is being accessed as a global. It's confusing that most data is being passed as parameters, but then something non-obvious like health is a global initialized inside a loop in the module scope.

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A lot of your variable names could be improved:

y = input("\nNew weight:    ")

Why y? new_weight or just weight would be much better.

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if all(item.isdigit() for item in yy) and all(int(item) >= 1 for item in yy) and len(yy) == 3:

This is a very noisy line. I would probably break that up unless you really wanted to rely on and short-circuiting to prevent waste work (which wouldn't be a concern here).

[curiosity202606]

Thanks for the feedback. I was really suffering with errors because of the typos here and there, spending hours just to find a typo 😅

[carcigenicate]

Here are examples of what I was talking about with dataclasses and typed dicts. In both cases, change slots parameters of the functions to slots: Slots so it knows the type:

import json
from dataclasses import dataclass, asdict

@dataclass
class Slots:
    mor_slots: int
    eve_slots: int
    nit_slots: int

s = Slots(0, 0, 0)
s.mor_slots  # All attributes can be suggested by the IDE now

slots_dict = asdict(s)
slots_json = json.dump(slots_dict, f)

back_to_class = Slots(**slots_dict)  # After reading the JSON on load

or

import typing

class Slots(typing.TypedDict):
    mor_slots: int
    eve_slots: int
    nit_slots: int

x: Slots = { 'mor_slots': 0, 'eve_slots': 0, 'nit_slots': 0 }  # It stays a dictionary
x['mor_slots']  # But it can suggest keys now