Why Python, Now?

Hello, for those of you that have followed my previous posts you will notice that I haven't really talked much about Python before. Python was my first language that I ever learned and when I decided to go more in the direction of web development I decided that JavaScript was going to be the language that I learned for that since it can be used on both the front and back end side of the equation. In recent months I have realized that I couldn't just abandon Python. There are so many awesome apps you can create with Python and even though you have to learn two languages in order to create the full stack application it is still worth learning and using Python as a backend language. Django and Flask both are really great tools and frameworks that allow you to quickly build out a backend for your application. Whether you want an API or just a backend Django and Flask both have you covered. Below is a simple application I wrote with Flask to better get acquainted with the framework.

This led me to a new approach. I would continue to work on Python projects outside of work tasks. I did try my hand at wrangling data from my previous employer as at the time I was writing queries and creating reports off of the data from said queries. I learned quite a bit about Data Science in that regards and the tools of the trade so to speak. I have since started to learn more about Flask and continued to use Django as one of the few non JavaScript backend frameworks.

Creating a Python Series

I am posting this to let anyone that is interested know that I will be creating a series based on Python projects that I have created and am creating currently. Some will be step by step guides to getting these projects up and running and others will just be a summary of what I did and why. There will also be at the bottom of the post an explanation as to why the project was created and what it's use case was/is.

The First Project

The first project that I have been working on is a simple Flask app. The app isn't an API it is just a Flask based static site that is a cool little RPG Dice roller. I created pages for all of the different dice used for table top rpg games. There are a few instances where I have created a die that doesn't necessarily exist in the form of dice but since we can use Python to randomize integers using the Range function combined with randint from the random module we can get a die roll from just about any kind of dice you can think of. This project stemmed from the need to have an easy and quick way to roll dice as the keeper for our Call of Cthulhu games. At first we only had the set of dice which was taking a while for anyone to do their roll checks.

The project was a lot of fun to write. It was very simple. I have thought about converting it to an API and trying to write a frontend with React but seeing how it won't have any graphics or anything like that I didn't want to go too crazy.

The project was simple enough to implement which helped me get better acquainted with Flask while also helping to solve a problem my group of friends were having with our table top games.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this post. I know that it's not the longest post and that it doesn't have any code snippets however in my next post I will show a project that I am currently working on with some code snippets. A hint of the project is a Flask API with a React Native frontend. Going to be pretty awesome. Stay tuned. And thanks for reading. If you have project ideas you would like me to tackle or questions for me please feel free to reach out in the comments below or send an email to me. programmingwithjon@gmail.com