My Beginner’s Journey (Part 4)
When I first opened up the Carly’s Clippers project, it felt refreshingly manageable: simple lists, basic math, and just a few loops. But, as I’ve learned on this Python path, simplicity can still hold plenty of struggle. This project gave me a great chance to practice core concepts like list iteration, list comprehensions, and working with indexes—and reminded me that even when the path is straightforward, it’s okay to walk it slowly.
Getting Started
I’m currently at Day 8 of my Beginner Python 3 Codecademy journey. For this assignment, I stepped into the role of data analyst for the fictional hair salon Carly’s Clippers. My job? Use three basic lists to calculate average prices, revenue, and potential marketing insights.
Project Overview
The project gave me three parallel lists:
-
hairstyles: the haircut names -
prices: the price of each haircut -
last_week: how many times each haircut was sold last week
Each index in the lists matched up across the three—so I could track price, name, and sales quantity together. The tasks were clear:
- Find the average haircut price
- Adjust the inflated pricing
- Calculate total revenue and average daily revenue
- Highlight haircuts that will be under $30 next week
Starting Points
- Loop through a list and add each item to get a total
- Use
len()to calculate averages - Apply list comprehensions to modify and filter data
- Use
range(len(list))to iterate by index
Enhancing the Experience
Discovering sum()
One of my favorite moments during this project came when I caught myself thinking, *There has to be a simpler way to sum these prices. * I was looping manually through the list like this:
…and then I found the beautiful little shortcut sum()! total_price = sum(prices). It felt like leveling up and not just solving the problem.
Cutting Prices with Comprehension
Carly wanted to reduce prices across the board by $5. That was my cue to use list comprehension:
Here’s where things got tricky. Even though list comprehension looks concise, I still find myself having to slow down and mentally unpack what’s going on. I know it’ll get easier with practice, but for now, I still need to break the logic down piece by piece.
Tracking Revenue
To calculate revenue, I needed to multiply each haircut price by the number of times it was sold—then add all those up. Here’s where I leaned into the range() function:
This was a satisfying little loop that showed me the power of working with index values when your lists are aligned.
Filtering by Price
Finally, I used a list comprehension again to find all haircuts that would be under $30 after the price cut:
This one was a bit of a brain-bender. I really had to slow down and ask myself: What am I pulling? From where? And under what condition? It took a few tries to get right—and I’m okay with that. These are exactly the reps I need.
Lessons Learned
-
sum()is a fantastic built-in shortcut for adding lists—and worth using whenever possible - List comprehensions are powerful, but still feel abstract to me. I'm learning to slow down and break them apart
- Parallel lists are easier to work with using index-based loops (
range(len(...))) - Even “simple” logic can reveal gaps in understanding—and that’s where the best growth happens
Final Thoughts
This project was short, clear, and incredibly valuable. The logic wasn’t complex, but it forced me to apply multiple list operations together—and more importantly, to slow down and understand what each piece of code was actually doing.
I still find myself second-guessing list comprehensions and occasionally getting stuck in the weeds with loops. But every time I solve one of these problems, it sticks a little more.
Next, I’d love to take this project and modularize it—maybe write a function to print a report summary or allow Carly to update styles dynamically. That’s a challenge for another day, though.
For now, I’m celebrating a working script, a few “aha!” moments, and another piece of my beginner puzzle falling into place.
If you’re also learning Python or exploring Codecademy’s path, I’d love to hear how you’d approach a project like this. Let’s keep growing—one cut, one loop, one list at a time.
The Code
You can check out my full script here: https://github.com/DaoistRose/Carly-s-Cuts
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