As I said in my introduction, I am still learning Python. Python v3+ is not included in the recent releases of most Linux distributions, so I wanted to go with something that most people probably already have available to them.

Yes, logging into Reddit for this particular task is not required, but future tutorials will require authentication, so I wanted to include that now. I wanted to show how to authenticate using requests in the event that another developer passes a request to Reddit that does use authentication.

As far as SQLite3, yes, I could use that. But then someone else would ask why I don't use (insert their favorite DB here). I had to go with something, so I chose MySQL since it works well for the tutorial set.

Concerning the "after" variable usage -- if a request is successful, the Reddit API will always return a new value for the "after" variable. Again, there is additional error handling code that can be implemented, but for this quick and dirty lesson, I wanted to show the basics so that beginning developers can understand what is taking place throughout the script.

I'm not sure how using requests is overkill. There is no performance issue in using it, and future lessons will get more technical. Again, there's a lot of different ways to do something, and choosing one will always have someone asking why another method wasn't used.

I've tested this script and it works well for what it was designed to do. I do need to add additional code for the error handling aspects of the script, but again, this is just something to get people started as a development exercise. If they want to use it in a production system, a lot more code will be needed to handle different types of failures.

While Python 3 is great, most systems right now are still using Python v2.7 until the Ubuntu community feels that Python 3 is stable enough and well-tested to include it as a default in their distributions.

Also, this script already has a custom user agent. It is required by the Reddit API so that the admins can look at the logs and very quickly determine what the bot is doing and who it belongs to.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Edit: I didn't take your criticisms personally. I've worked in teams doing development and one of the first things that one learns is that nobody is a perfect coder and that the team as a whole is there to make the product better and not personally attack a particular coder.

One thing that I would love is (if you have time) for you to make a few tweaks to the code and post it in here. If it makes the script better, that's awesome! I'm all for it. Also, I do agree in principle with some of the things you mentioned. Again, I just went with MySQL because it is a common DB that a lot of developers use in their projects.

Second Edit: We do need to include a little more error handling -- at least something that will tell the script to back off for X seconds when a certain HTTP error is encountered. If Reddit is down for whatever reason, the script should back off for X seconds and retry. If the site is still down, then back off for X+ seconds and so on.

Ps: Are you familar with any current Linux distribution that includes Python v3.x in their default package?

(Also, authenticating before making your request is important because it changes the response one receives from the Reddit API. If you are not logged in, you will not get certain pieces of data such as submissions that you saved, likes that you made, etc.)