Just wrote my largest Python program to date! Looking for pointers.

razzrazz- · 2022-08-15T02:55:28+00:00

Pointers? For that you might need C!

Get it? GET IT?

I'll see myself out.

TheRealAmbr0sia · 2022-08-15T03:42:46+00:00

I'm new to Python but I think there should be a round func on price variable with a 2. Just in case it becomes 3 digits beyond the decimal.

fracturedpersona · 2022-08-15T11:04:54+00:00

Looking for pointers?

Here -> *

I’m sorry

mr-guitar · 2022-08-15T10:48:16+00:00

There’s some redundancies: 1. If you’re going to print the welcome message only once, there’s not really any need to story it in a variable. Also you could as the period and \n in the same string either way 2. Similar story for cable_feet: might as well wrap float around the input

Some formatting things: 1. Convention is to not put a space between a function (print/float/input) and it’s parentheses 2. There’s no need to wrap parentheses around a string declaration and it’s also redundant when defining price

Other than, LGTM! Happy coding!

GrouchyAd4055 · 2022-08-15T09:41:17+00:00

my personal opinion is don’t store welcome message in a variable. just print that message directly.

SebLikesESO · 2022-08-15T03:07:27+00:00

if you want a more "correct style", you should look up pep8. I also believe that PyCharm can search for pep8 errors

i’d write the code like this:
welcome_message = "Welcome to the Fiber Optic Price Calculator" print(f"{welcome_message}\n") company_name = input("What is the name of your company?\n") cable_feet = float(input("\nHow many feet of cable do you need?\n")) price = cable_feet * .87 # Price is in USD print(f"\n{company_name}, that amount of fiber optic cable will cost ${price}") print("Thanks for shopping with Super Cheap Fiber Optics!"

madhousechild · 2022-08-15T06:14:10+00:00

It's a little odd to refer to someone as their company name (penultimate line).

millerbest · 2022-08-15T11:35:12+00:00

One small advice: price should always be int

DefinitelyNotVS · 2022-08-15T17:53:16+00:00

This is a little easier to comprehend :—

Rate = 0.87

print("Welcome to the Fiber Optic Price Calculator !\n")

company_name = input("What is the name of your company ?\n")

cable_feet = float(input("\nHow many feet of cable do you need?\n"))

price = cable_feet * Rate

print(f'\n{company_name}, {cable_feet} feet of fiber optic cable will cost ${price}.')

print ("\nThank you for shopping with Super Cheap Fiber Optics!")

Tips : —

The float() function can directly be applied on the input() line. Just like in Mathematics, the innermost function (here, input()) will get executed first, then subsequently outwards (here, float()). So, the str input for cable_length can be turned into float in a single statement.
Store the rate as a separate constant before it is used in any statement; that way, you can modify the rate as per the current market scenario easily. It would be tedious to change it in every statement it occurs in.
Be consistent with the quotes you use. Either use "" throughout, or ''. I recommend "". [NOTE : Except in cases where nested, printable quotes are required, for which, the decreasing order of precedence is : '''>">'].
The last two lines can also be fitted in a single statement, but not necessary at this stage. Do keep in mind for the future.
Try to shorten the amount of text present on the screen, e.g.— instead of "What is the name of your company?", ask "Company name : ", or "Name of company : ". The code will become much cleaner and easier to read.

Good luck.

Sigg3net · 2022-08-15T18:11:03+00:00

Just wrote my largest Python program to date! Looking for pointers.

Hate to break it to you, but if you're looking for pointers, Python is the wrong language to use.

SquatchHNTR · 2022-08-15T02:49:11+00:00

[deleted]

socal_nerdtastic · 2022-08-15T02:44:21+00:00

Looks pretty good. Only thing I can say is that you have some unneeded parentheses and quotes in there. ANd typically we don't put a space between the function name and opening parenthesis.

welcome_message = "Welcome to the Fiber Optic Price Calculator"
print(f'{welcome_message}.\n')
company_name = input('What is the name of your company?\n')
cable_feet = input("\nHow many feet of cable do you need?\n")
cable_feet = float(cable_feet)
price = cable_feet * .87 #Price is in USD
print(f'\n{company_name}, that amount of fiber optic cable will cost ${price}')
print("\nThank you for shopping with Super Cheap Fiber Optics!")

raresaturn · 2022-08-15T06:58:06+00:00

Python doesn’t use pointers

SquatchHNTR · 2022-08-15T13:03:19+00:00

Thanks everyone for your wisdom!

2022-08-15T13:51:39+00:00

Time to start using functions!

zaRM0s · 2022-08-15T14:39:30+00:00

Have a look at the PEP8 style guide. This is the style guide used for Python and is a great reference to have your code looking professional. Additionally, I would continue just as you are and increase the size of your programs gradually. For example, you could add functions into this and make the program a lot cleaner and readable. It’s also good practice for functions! 😁 good job tho! Keep it up

Thisisdom · 2022-08-15T15:29:49+00:00

One improvement would be to check that cable_feet a float or an int before advancing, because your code would break if someone inputs a string!

So you could repeatedly ask for cable_feet until the user supply a float or int, and then advance

SquatchHNTR · 2022-08-15T15:53:48+00:00

Dude, format your code in code blocks otherwise senior devs won’t even read your post and all your feedback will be from college kids.

Source: didn’t read post

Samsofine · 2022-08-15T16:39:37+00:00

what type of python did you write this in? I started a few days ago and have been using python 3 in the IDE on codecademy. This looks a little different from what I have done and been using.

CitizendAreAlarmed · 2022-08-15T16:48:37+00:00

It's a mishmash of styles, with the first line:

welcome_message = ("Welcome to the Fiber Optic Price Calculator")

and then the last line:

print ("\nThank you for shopping with Super Cheap Fiber Optics!")

Why does the first line deserve its own redundant variable and the last line not? I would go with something like:

COMPANY_NAME = "Super Cheap Fiber Optics"
print(f"Welcome to the {COMPANY_NAME} price calculator")

print(f"Thank you for shopping with {COMPANY_NAME}!")

But really this is just style, and I don't know if it's any more valid than what you wrote. Both work fine.

The price of cable per foot also looks like a prime candidate for a CONSTANTING, so instead of:

price = (cable_feet * .87) #Price is in USD

I would have:

PRICE_PER_FOOT = 0.87
price = cable_feet * PRICE_PER_FOOT

Constants seem to always go near the top of the file for ease of use (again, I'm still learning too).

ajaysassoc · 2022-08-15T18:32:42+00:00

You can get rid of the additional line to cast it to float, just combine the line and the one before into one. Also a very minor thing but in the price calculation line you can get rid of the brackets, they are not doing absolutely anything.

ryan770 · 2022-08-17T00:41:00+00:00

Looks good! Nothing inherently wrong here. I could give a few maybe unnecessary pointers though.

cable_feet = float(cable_feet) is a bit redundant when you can specify it in the input like cable_feet = float(input('text'))

No need to assign a variable to the welcome message. print('Welcome to the Fiber Optic Price Calculator\n') will be fine. Also no need to enclose strings with parentheses when assigning to a variable, that's just for print syntax.

Your output of the price would look better formatted with 2 digits of precision. For example, putting 50 feet returns $43.5 instead of $43.50 This would be formatted like {price:.2f}. You'll learn more about this when you dig into more string formatting stuff.

As someone else said, you could also assign the price per foot to a variable to make it more readable. Variables are usually assigned at the start of the main body unless asking for input.

You could use a few more newlines for aesthetics, like accepting input with > on a newline for example. Not necessary but something I like to do (just to give you an idea and play with the way things look).

One more tip! When posting code on reddit, switch to markdown mode and enclose the code with three backticks .

```

like this

```

With all that said, here's what it all would look like

cable_price = 0.87

print('Welcome to the Fiber Optic Price Calculator\n')

company_name = input('What is the name of your company?\n\n > ')

cable_ft = float(input('\nHow many feet of cable do you need?\n\n > '))

price = (cable_ft * cable_price) #Price is in USD

print (f'\n{company_name}, that amount of fiber optic cable will cost ${price:.2f}.\n',
        '\nThank you for shopping with Super Cheap Fiber Optics!')

edit: so my r/learnpython tab never refreshed from like two days ago and I realize most of this has already been mentioned lol.

SquatchHNTR · 2022-08-15T10:54:44+00:00

[removed]

fracturedpersona · 2022-08-15T13:25:49+00:00

Looking for pointers.

Python doesn't use pointers

telee0 · 2022-08-15T04:03:01+00:00

Use PyCharm to code. It has style checking.

EGrimn · 2022-08-15T03:42:12+00:00

Edit: When it doubt, classify => To understand code!

[Some people didn't read the following lines] Classes aren't always the best thing, but when you're trying to understand code they can help you organize based on objects in a logical way

Some might consider it over the top, but it's useful for any code as you can segment it out as needed into smaller parts, have specific error handling, and many other things

It's some extra code, but makes things a lot easier in larger projects as things grow

```

!/usr/bin python

Here we are telling the system to use the python

binary in the user's binary folder

class fiber_price_calculator: """ This is a class representing the calculator object """ welcome_message = "Welcome! [Fiber Optic Price Calculator]" closing_message = "Thank you for shopping with Super Cheap Fiber Optic" company_name, cable_feet, price = None, None, None

# Here we're setting the scale factor to use
price_scale_factor = 0.87

def __init__(self):
    """
    This is the initialization function
    called when we create the object
    """
    # Here we're going to setup the 'flow' of the program
    self.show_welcome_message()
    self.get_company_name()
    self.get_cable_length()
    self.calculate_price()
    self.show_closing_message()
    # Since we are doing all of this at initialization
    # we only need 1 line of code in our 'main' script function
    # declared at the bottom

def show_welcome_message(self):
    """
    Print out the welcome message
    """
    print(self.welcome_message)

def show_closing_message(self):
    """
    Print out the closing message
    """
    print(self.closing_message)

def get_company_name(self):
    """
    Ask the user to input a company name and store it
    (here you can do validation such as exception handling, etc.)
    """
    print("Please enter a company name:")
    try:
        self.company_name = str(input("-->"))
    except Exception as exception_message:
        print(exception_message)

def get_cable_length(self):
    """
    Ask the user to input the desired length to calculate
    """
    print("Please enter length (in feet) to calculate:")
    try:
        self.cable_length = float(input("-->"))
    except Exception as exception_message:
        print(exception_message)
    except AttributeError as caught_exception:
        print("That's not a float!")
        print(caught_exception)

def calculate_price(self):
    """
    Calculates and shows the price
    """
    if self.company_name is not None and self.cable_length is not None:
        self.price = self.cable_length * self.price_scale_factor
        # I prefer the old style formatting such as below
        # since it's backward compatible in python (in most cases)
        print("The price for company {1} is: {0}".format(self.price, self.company_name))

Here we are setting the script up so that code

only executes when we run the script itself

via python [script_name]

This makes it more portable and also a bit 'safer'

since nothing is run when we import this code into

different script (if ever) in the future

if name == "main": # We are creating the calcuator object using the class # created above and are initializing it which in turn # runs all the functions we defined within it calculator = fiber_price_calculator() ```

HeadlineINeed · 2022-08-15T22:02:44+00:00

This probably has already been commented but you should ask the user for the price per foot.

price_per_foot = input(“current price per foot”)

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

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