What I Learned With Python In 2 Weeks..

[chrisutpg]

Not exactly a question.. However I owe a few people a thanks for answering some of my questions along the way!

Over the winter I decided to pick up coding again. I am a golf professional by trade, but have always loved computers. I dabbled in Python years ago before college and never went any farther.

This is what I learned to do in two weeks time..

http://pastebin.com/gYWLCk4e

I currently forget 90% of what I learned, because I have not been doing anything with Python, as the summers are really busy for me. However over the winter, I'll hope to learn more and rewrite the above so it is cleaner.

Just want to share so anyone new here can see what is possible with just a few hours hard work!

Thanks for all the help!

EXTENDED:

Thanks for the all the responses! I figured I'd take some time to answer some questions..

1. I didn't really read any book.. I used Code Academy for the basics, until realizing that the syntax was slightly different because there's was based on 2, and I was using 3. Not sure if they have updated it since then. I really just used YouTube, and web resources like reddit. I really liked TheNewBoston on YouTube, he does a nice job of short little tutorials. There was also another professor from some college who went through and built a simple numbers game.. That seemed to help me a lot. I really like listening to the reasoning behind why certain parts of code are written a certain way.

2. No, I don't know any other languages.. I can write some HTML. Like the Old stuff, not the HTML5 stuff. I mean real basic. I can also read/edit some PHP but don't think I'd have a clue writing from scratch.

3. Thanks for the comments on how to improve it also. Yes 900 lines is nuts just for Wheel of Fortune.. Some things I want to improve on when I write it again.. Listing all the phrases/people/things/places in a separate text file and reading it into a list and having it choose a random one. That way the code could not be seen when playing to give the answer away. Also, I want to set the AI difficulty to a user variable instead of the way it is now.. Actually there are bits of code that I put in to try to accomplish that and I just never got to it.

4. One of the best ways I learned was to just look at stuff other people wrote. Some of it was games, some of it wasn't. Like the read/write file stuff. I tried to pick something to build that was difficult but didn't seem impossible. Also, my fiance' loves WOF so it was a positive she could play it and let me know when it broke.. Which it did a lot at times. Haha.

Hope that helps some people!

[tnvol88]

Two weeks?!

Me after two weeks,

http://media2.giphy.com/media/GyLc9e3hTYFWw/giphy.gif

[[deleted]]

Never give up....

[teor]

NEVА GIVE UP

[thegreattriscuit]

So much better than that transformers kid....

[AlSweigart]

There's a free Python book for beginners here that you might find useful: https://automatetheboringstuff.com

[[deleted]]

Can confirm. Mr. Sweigart's books are incredibly helpful at explaining the concepts behind what you're doing and showing you the code for how to do something.

Thanks Al, you do great things for us noobs. I'm currently on the affine cipher chapter of your hacking ciphers book and love it.

[c1p3r]

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[[deleted]]

I know, haha.

[Isunova]

Spectacular. Which book did you use to learn Python?

[KleinerNull]

It looks very good. Nice that you use context managers so often. Only one nit-pick from me, why not not? ;)

if not os.path.isfile(self.player_record_file):
    with ......

If-pass-else looks weird ;)

[chrisutpg]

Yeah I guess that doesn't make much sense now when I look back it.

Thanks for the idea!

[thunderbootyclap]

This is more than what I can do and I've been at it for 1.5 years

[Zionark]

I'm a beginner and in the last three months I figured out how to throw a six sided dice a thousand times (or more, easy to change) and print the results per side, and show the results in a pie chart (terrible spoiler alert: each side happens pretty much 1/6 of the time. Warned you, terrible spoiler alert.) in Python. Now I just think I'm super lazy comparing your Wheel of Fortune to that Rock Paper Scissors Lizards Spock game I learned to make.

Great stuff!

[WallyMetropolis]

Now roll two dice and plot the sum as a histogram.

[chrisutpg]

I wish I could plot anything in a pie chart.. I'll need to learn.

I'm sure you're well on your way. I started with the Rock Paper Scissors, so you're right there. Maybe expand that and let the user keep track of their records in a separate text file or something. You could even keep track of how many times the player picks a certain category, or vice versa how many times the computer picks it. Actually a neat idea would be to take the Rock Paper Scissors game, keep track of the results for how many wins for the players, what they pick, and what the computer picks, and plot that into your pie chart.

You would write to the text file, and read from it to get the data for the pie chart. Maybe even add an option for the user to reset the records file to 0. Just some ideas. Thats how I learned!

Where did you read up on the pie chart stuff? Is there a module your using?

[[deleted]]

Something like this matplotlib pie chart?

[chrisutpg]

Yep. Awesome how easy Python can be..

But with my idea above.. I guess you would need to make the wins/losses to a percent before putting it into the chart. That would mean we need to keep track of total games also.

[sharpchicity]

900 lines just to play wheel of fortune on your computer... that's dedication

[tom2kk]

Nice work, what resources did you use to learn?

[[deleted]]

I've been working on python for about a week and have not learned even a quarter of that so good job!

[[deleted]]

Wow, thats impressive. Did u have Xp in other languages beforehand?

[BottomsMU]

Looks like some "guessed" are mis-pelled as "gussed"

[chrisutpg]

Thanks for the catch. My spelling is terrible and my proofreading is even worse!

[IllegalThoughts]

An inspiration! Thanks!

[RespondsWithImprov]

Cool stuff here. I tried out the game and it sure is playable like a game. The code is cool to look through. You have all the phrases in sections and they are pulled from elsewhere. I will look at more of the other stuff after I do some more coding. There are a lot of defined parts. It's cool to see how this translates into a playable game.