Comments on: import antigravity

Question: import antigravity

limon — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 10:40:36 -0800

I'm learning Python for fun and need ideas for neat programs to write.

I know the basic features of the language pretty well, including some of the trickier stuff like list comprehension, but I don't know the standard library very well.

So that you can gauge my current level, I'll have you know that the most sophisticated thing I've written so far is an implementation of the game Reversi (aka Othello), including a simple AI, for which I am currently writing a GUI in wxPython (I didn't like Tkinter).

Not interested in learning Django (yet).

I used the challenges in Project Euler for a while -- I solved the first 25 -- and it was fun while I was still mastering the semantics of Python. But I've grown tired of them: the problems are increasingly complex mathematically, but relatively easy to implement once one grasps the appropriate algorithm. I also dabbled with Python Challenge.

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 10:42:51 -0800

PyGame is fun to play with, and the examples are helpful.

By: fatbird

fatbird — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 10:51:51 -0800

Dave Thomson's Code Kata. Very practical real world problems to solve in bite sized chunks.

By: plexi

plexi — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:06:40 -0800

It's pretty fun to use the Obj. C bridge to write apps for OSX.

By: plexi

plexi — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:07:20 -0800

A link would have been helpful.

By: chrisamiller

chrisamiller — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:58:37 -0800

Play with genetic algorithms a little bit - they never cease to amaze me. Try to evolve a certain image, or solve some other tricky problem.

Use an algorithm based on ant colonies to solve a travelling salesman problem.

By: swapspace

swapspace — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:18:22 -0800

PyMOTW is great for learning standard libraries and Programming Collective Intelligence is a great book for getting started on some awesome ideas. All examples are in Python.

By: Free word order!

Free word order! — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:08:16 -0800

One of the most useful things to learn is to read files and manipulate data in them. If you have anything relevant to your life or your past projects in Excel or Matlab, try saving them as tabbed text files and do some 'data mining'. Log files can also be interesting. If the data contains natural language, at some point you'll need to learn regular expressions to find things. Regular expressions are un-pythonic, but very useful cross-language skill.

In any knowledge intensive work you'll meet tasks that need ripping information from many documents. It is good to have an intuition when the task could be automated with a clever python script.

By: zpousman

zpousman — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:25:21 -0800

You can get up to speed on visual stuff in Python quickly with Nodebox. It is a sexy way to immediately begin creating visual works using Python, including full support for python imports and other stuff. Nodebox focuses on 2D, at least in my experience. I don't think there is native 3D support (but here's a quick example of a guy who created a 3DPoint class).

By: Zed

Zed — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:17:02 -0800

All the problems you could want.

By: cowbellemoo

cowbellemoo — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:56:37 -0800

I asked a similar question a while back relating to python and puzzles, maybe you'll find something that appeals to you, too.