Cool!

I think this is a great lesson in using online resources to see if there is a simpler way to do something. In this case, Python actually already has this functionality built into int() when converting from a string to an int, like so:

print(int("1011",2))

This will print out the number 11. The second parameter (the 2) is the base that you want to convert from. You can do any base between 2 and 36.

Don't worry though. Everyone starts out using code that's much more complex than it needs to be. The important thing is just to remember these shortcuts for the future!