Programming

Continuing the Flask course. Learnt about seperation of concerns today. To me that means that I should try to keep related things together and disparate stuff apart. Case in point, we1 created a seperate file config.py to store the variables about the program in. And then to kind of secure it even more, instead of hardcoding the password in the file, it now looks for an environment variable, which I need to set before running the program. Another example was when we created a seperate file to process input (for our logins) and then put all the login, password etc. fields in there. This feels good. Feels like I am learning best practices and good habits already. ...

Continuing with the Flask course. Today I learnt about how to loop, using Jinja loop blocks. The syntax is slowly becoming clear to me. Everything python related in enclosed is {% … %} blocks, except for variables which use their own {{ … }} syntax. What I am still confused on is the relationship between the various files, I am writing. There is html and then there are templates and there are python files themselves. Hopefully that will get clearer in the days to come. My naïve understanding, right now, is ...

Second day with the Flask course. Beginning to realise that Flask is not a monolithic thing, but consists of a lot of moving parts. Looking forward to learning what they are as I progress along. Today I learnt how to set my Flask variable, and create an environment, so that I can run Flask consistently without problems. Miguel also teaches a simple, yet effective way to combat yak shaving. You know, where all you want is one simple thing, but then that depends on that other thing, which reminds you that you need that third thing and the next thing you know, you’re at the zoo, shaving a yak, all so you can wax your car. Just don’t do that other thing. Focus on what you are doing. If there is something you need, use a dummy. Mock something up. This is a very real, meta lesson, that I’ll carry with me for the rest of my days. ...

Started to very slowly do the Mega Flask Tutorial. This real world project-cum-tutorial, should let me learn more real-world-esque Python and expand beyond the tiny vocabulary, I have. Setup my environment today and created a baby flask app. Even that had something to teach me. I could not quite wrap my head around decorators, the first time I read about them and this tiny app uses routes in the form of decorators. Which meant, I had to go read about them and understand them first. ...

Done with the Talk Python course. And now to shift to low intensity Python learning while I ramp up studies for the 12th exams. Will probably learn Flask with Miguel Grinberg.

More muddling, more plodding