Reworder – A tale of learning Python and launching an app in five days.

[Luyt]

make sure you use tabs to format all of your Python code

I disagree. Idiomatic Python uses 4 spaces per indent.

Either solely use tabs or solely use spaces, they don’t work well together, at least in my experience

Mixing tabs and spaces is indeed very unwise. You can run Python with the -tt option to make sure you're consistent.

Read Style Guide for Python Code for more advice on this front

I agree ;-) The author probably refers to PEP8, http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/

[bwooceli]

Could not agree more!!!! If you're a vimmy, be sure to add this friendly helper into your .vimrc

:set tabstop=4

:set shiftwidth=4

:set expandtab

[shortlived]

I was fixing a makefile the other day with a coworker and it ended up being an indentation issue. And then we asked out loud why anyone would repeat this hell again...

Now, I am not a python programmer, but I am interested to learn more about how the structure via indentation how worked out for the language.

[sahillavingia]

Ah yes, I'll read more into it! thanks :)

[gurraman]

  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/__init__.py", line 513, in __call__
      handler.post(*groups)
    File "/base/data/home/apps/reworder/1.345779356045891791/reworder.py", line 122, in post
      headers={'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'}).content)
    File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/third_party/django-0.96/django/utils/simplejson/__init__.py", line 232, in loads
      return cls(encoding=encoding, **kw).decode(s)
    File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/third_party/django-0.96/django/utils/simplejson/decoder.py", line 251, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
    File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/third_party/django-0.96/django/utils/simplejson/decoder.py", line 270, in raw_decode
      raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
  ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded

Entered text "this is a test." and hit submit.

[sahillavingia]

Figured out the bug: hit the API request limit. Argh!

[colbyolson]

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/__init__.py", line 513, in __call__
        handler.post(*groups)
      File "/base/data/home/apps/reworder/1.345779356045891791/reworder.py", line 140, in post
        synonym = synonym_for_word(stripped_word, tag)
      File "/base/data/home/apps/reworder/1.345779356045891791/reworder.py", line 201, in synonym_for_word
        return result.get(word_type)['syn'][0]
    KeyError: 'syn'

[olalonde]

Hence, Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years[1]. All kidding aside, I'm pretty sure it's unrelated to the actual code :)

[1] http://norvig.com/21-days.html

[itsnotvalid]

"I was already pretty dead set on learning a functional language (either Python or Ruby)"

Did I see something strange here?

[rimantas]

He meant javscript. A common typo.

[josephcooney]

He said he wanted to learn a functional language, and then listed Python and Ruby. Weird.

[moconnor]

It's an easy mistake to make - when you come from a Java or C# background one of the most striking things about Python and Ruby code is the use of first-class functions.

Not everybody knows that there's more to a functional language than first-class functions.

[sahillavingia]

There's a joke here I don't get. Care to explain? :D

[torme]

Completely unrelated to your write up but theres a bug. In FF if I back up and resubmit it doesn't update to the new text. I still see my first submission.

[sahillavingia]

Ah yes, I randomly generate a permalink on load of the page, so it uses the old permalink, hence why it loads the first submission. Any ideas on how to change this?

[smoody]

"App engine is fast and awesome, right now. However, if your site gets really popular, you may consider moving off of it."

Perhaps you can explain why you believe this to be true? I thought that the strength of App Engine is that you can stay on it no matter how popular your app gets.

[sahillavingia]

App engine doesn't allow certain features, like subdomains for each user, and non-www. URLs. Some other things too, that I probably don't even know about yet.

[jscore]

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/__init__.py", line 513, in __call__ handler.post(*groups) File "/base/data/home/apps/reworder/1.345779356045891791/reworder.py", line 140, in post synonym = synonym_for_word(stripped_word, tag) File "/base/data/home/apps/reworder/1.345779356045891791/reworder.py", line 201, in synonym_for_word return result.get(word_type)['syn'][0] KeyError: 'syn'

[StanDarsh]

Awesome story. Thank you very much for the Stanford links.

[jacquesm]

Hey, weren't you supposed to be a designer :) That's pretty quick to go from 0 to launch in 5 days in an unknown language.

Congratulations!

[sahillavingia]

Designer, developer, coder, sleep-deprived. I'm a dude of many properties! :)

[paulbaumgart]

Any input containing a forward slash results in a ValueError.

[davidj]

if anyone cares, rephrasing engines are used to create splogs for SEO

[dgreensp]

Breaks on apostrophes.