On Nov 18, 6:39�pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hi guys, > > I'm learning Python by teaching myself, and after going through several > tutorials I feel like I've learned the basics. Since I'm not taking a > class or anything, I've been doing challenges/programs to reinforce the > material and improve my skills. I started out with stuff like "Guess my > number" games, hangman, etc. and moved on to making poker and card > games to work with classes. For GUIs I created games like minesweeper, > and a GUI stock portfolio tracker. I am out of ideas and am looking for > programming projects, challenges, or programs that have helped you'll > learn. I'm working on the project Euler problems, but I find that they > don't really help my programming skills; they are more math focused. > Suggestions? What has been useful or interesting to you?
Math problems. :-) > I'd also > welcome sources of textbook type problems, because the ones provided in > tutorials tend to be repetitive. I read rec.puzzles regularly and always approach each puzzle in a "how would I solve this with a program" way. Not all lend themselves to computer solutions, some of the regulars there frown on computer answers and some are simply math problems in disguise. I follow sci.math for the same reason. And alt.math. And alt.math.recreational. Another hobby I have is tracking movie box-office receipts (where you can make interesting graphs comparing Titanic to Harry Potter or how well the various sequels do, if Pierce Brosnan saved the James Bond franchise, what can you say about Daniel Craig?). Lots of potential database problems there. Not to mention automating the data collection from the Internet Movie Database by writing a web page scraper than can grab six months worth of data in a single session (you probably wouldn't need this if you cough up a subscription fee for professional access, but I'm not THAT serious about it). There is nothing like such a hobby to provide motivation to learn programming. Here's something interesting: take a films opening weekend box-office receipts and multiply it by Pi. You'll get the film's total gross. > > Thanks, > Ben -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
