Etarc Coders Club

Definitely.

It probably needed saying, though.

But only once. :grinning:

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Not so distant. I remember, back in the day, paying a lot of money for Borland Turbo Basic. And yes, I know it’s not language per se that you pay for, but the package. Still, free is always good.

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ATM I’m exploring the revival of my old Google Drive account - which I don’t think I’ve used since 2016.

I meant it when I said I don’t like Google - but needs must when the Devil drives. We will need a solution that’s available to everyone.

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OK, let’s try again.

Below is a Google Drive link. It should allow you to download a copy of a Python file I have made.

You can open and examine it with any text editor, but to run it you need Python installed on your computer.

Save the file in a directory of your choice. Then right-click on it, go to ā€œopen withā€, and choose Python.

I have another one in the works - it does more or less the same thing, but in a different way. I’m still working on it.

As for this one - download it, try it, open it, mess with it, alter it, add your own stuff… you get the idea.

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Yes, works! I now know what the sign says :smiley:

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:grinning: It’s a great secret. Guard it closely.

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Test 2:

Aaaahh. The days of non-proportional fonts.

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I feel myself being drawn into something that I did not think I had time for…where is a good place to download Python?

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Always download from the creator when you can. Far less chance of sneaky additions.

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In the terms of the software industry, that’s ancient history… :wink:

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Well that’s the trouble with getting old.

But when the alternative is getting dead, you’ll be surprised how attractive getting old really is.

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I originally started this subject in another thread, because I wanted advice on programming books. Since then, I have found a lot. The good old Internet Archive has a very useful collection of Python books - all available to download, for free.

I can’t comment on the legality of some of these. Some were clearly intended to be free and public domain - others, I’m not so sure. The fact is, they’re currently available for download, and all they’ll cost you is the time to do it, and some space on your hard drive.

Below are live links to the Internet Archive. Click on the book of your choice, and you’ll be offered download options. Have fun :grinning:.

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I haven’t given up on my python project, just got stuck on something… I hope I’ll have at least something demolike to show soon… :face_with_peeking_eye:

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I look forward to it.

A few days ago, @MacForADay was talking about generative text, and that got me thinking - so I’m currently working on a prophecy generator. If you’ve ever read any Nostradamus or the Book of Revelations, you have an idea of the kind of stuff it creates. I’m about half way through. The first half is tested and working - I need to write the dictionaries for the second half.

I think I’ll call it:

ā€œThe World of Wisdom - A Prophet in Your Pocketā€. :grin:

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I used to make webpages in notepad using html code on windows 95. I really wanted to get in to coding stuff but when I started second level education and I had trouble learning to read music and learn a new language it was soon discovered I have some sort of block there, can’t remember the term given.

Fortunately you can still make music and play by ear and if you meet someone who doesn’t speak yr language you can still rely on the natural language of emotion and body language.

With coding you get no such leeway so that was that.

Macromedia Dreamweaver was a god send at the time because I no longer had to look up my huge list of codewords every time I wanted to do something (I could type the code for a header a billion times and never retain it. And html is super basic) I was able to make websites for local bands in my teens but I knew it wasn’t something I would be able to do professionally with a handicap.

Great to see you learning a new skill, I’ve friends who just learnt python for a new job and it does sound like a very fun language to work with. Also great to see so much enthusiasm from everyone else. I look forward to the Python port of Thumbleweed :blush:

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What a super idea for a thread @Polyphemus :smiley: A few years ago, when I was ill for a couple weeks, I idly learned some basics of Python and managed to write a program to solve Countdown (just to learn) I really had no idea what I was doing but I did manage to arrive at a solution over several months. Perhaps it was more of a ā€˜brute force’ approach but I learned a lot. Very probably someone with math experience would solve it in an afternoon. I have since seen published other examples how to approach solutions which were great to learn from. For my next trick a 3D game using Blender and Unity… o.O

A super python programming book I think recommened on the Python org website I found really helpful for anyone with zero programming experience like me ,was aspiringly titled, ā€˜How To Think Like a Computer Scientist’ by Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyers. There may be a Python 3 edition today.

I’ll have to dig out the old code if anyone is interested in my horrific approach to the history of progamming. Be sure I would have very ā€˜silly’ questions on probably the very basics of programming. This is certainly an encouraging thread for someone like me who really dreams a lot. : D

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This is great! : )

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@toddumptious , @johnnycloud,

Thank you for saying nice things about the club. I hope you will join in. No experience is necessary or expected, and apart from a suitable computer, everything you need is available for free.

It is my hope that we can encourage and support each other, and discover programming together. I hope that we can do this in such a way that we don’t have expectations of other people’s abilities or knowledge.
Particularly that we don’t mock or make fun of others for their initial lack of ability. Rather, we should recognise that we all had to start somewhere.

I, for one, am happy to say ā€œI know very little about this subject - but I’m trying to learnā€. I would be pleased if you would come along for the ride. Join in. Make contributions. Do silly stuff, make mistakes (I promise I will).

I’m still working on the prophecy generator. It’s on hold for a few days, while I get the latest expedition to a satisfactory conclusion, and out of my system. Expect me to post some code in five or six days, and you can play with it.

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I had to give up on my project, I’ll pick another one. :slight_smile:

I explained my idea to some classmates, and they understood what I meant, but I simply can’t express it in Python, and I didn’t want to bother them with writing it.

(It was supposed to be a ā€œsimpleā€ 2-dimensional pinball-like game. Picture the player charging up the ā€œspringā€ and aiming a spaceship into different gravity fields, each millimeter of mouse movement would result in a different trajectory influenced by several fields. Mathematically possible – but a waste of time to implement as a quick beginner project. It would also need optimisation to run fast (and that’s even before adding graphics! I was only doing the calculations in the model).

One mistake I made was explaining it to ChatGPT which insisted that it could be done by one line of code… which calculated half of one step with half the values of another and was completely inapplicable. :person_facepalming: That lead me astray a bit.

Anyway. Next idea!

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Reminded me of this pinball, Orbitor 1 :smile:

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