DEV Community: Ben Soyka

Build a Simple Guessing Game in Python

Ben Soyka — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 04:18:36 +0000

In this piece, you will learn how to make a simple high-low guessing game in Python.

Concept

The user will guess a number. If their guess is correct, they win. If it is not correct, the program will tell them to guess higher or lower depending on the number. This will repeat until the user has won.

Getting Started With Python 3

First of all, if you don’t already have Python installed, you will need to install it on your computer. You can do this from the Python website. You will need the latest version of Python 3 for this tutorial. (version 3.x.x)

Make sure you check the box that says to add Python to the PATH variable. If you don’t do this, it will be difficult to run the program.

Now, open up a text/code editor on your device. Personally, I use Brackets. Windows comes with Notepad pre-installed. Mac OS includes TextEdit. Linux users can use Vim.

Once you have a text editor open, save a new file. I would name it main.py, but you can call it whatever you’d like, as long as it ends in .py.

Coding

The instructions for this tutorial will be included in the code itself as comments. In Python, a comment starts with a # and continues until the end of the line.

# First, we need to import the 'random' module.
# This module contains the functionality we need to be able to randomly select the winning number.

import random

# Now, we need to select a random number.
# This line will set the variable 'correct' to be equal to a random integer between 1 and 10.

correct = random.randint(1, 10)

# Let's get the user's first guess using the 'input' function.

guess = input("Enter your guess: ")

# Right now, the user's input is formatted as a string.
# We can format it as an integer using the 'int' function.

guess = int(guess)

# Let's start a loop that will continue until the user has guessed correctly.
# We can use the '!=' operator to mean 'not equal'.

while guess != correct:

    # Everything in this loop will repeat until the user has guessed correctly.
    # Let's start by giving the user feedback on their guess. We can do this using the 'if' statement.

    # This statement will check if a comparison is true.
    # If it is, the code inside the 'if' statement will run.

    if guess > correct:

        # This code will run if the user guessed too high.
        # We can show a message to the user using the 'print' function.

        print("You've guessed too high. Try guessing lower.")

    else:

        # The 'else' statement adds on to an 'if' statement.
        # It will run if the condition of the 'if' statement is false.

        # In this case, it will run if the user guessed too low, so we can give them feedback.

        print("You've guessed too low. Try guessing higher.")

    # Now we need to let the user guess again.
    # Notice how I am combining the two lines of guessing code to make just one line.

    guess = int(input("Enter your guess: "))

# If a user's guess is still incorrect, the code in the 'while' loop will be repeated.
# If they've reached this point in the code, it means they guessed correctly, so let's say that.

print("Congratulations! You've guessed correctly.")

Also, feel free to change whatever you’d like to in your program.

For example, you could make the correct number be between 1 and 100 instead of 1 and 10. You could change what the program says in the print() functions. Whatever you want, it’s your code now.

Running Your Program

Open up the command prompt (Windows/Linux) or the terminal (Mac), depending on your operating system. Try each of the following commands in order. At least one of them should work if Python is installed correctly.

python C:/Users/username/Desktop/main.py
py C:/Users/username/Desktop/main.py
python3 C:/Users/username/Desktop/main.py

Make sure you replace C:/Users/username/Desktop/main.py with the full path to your Python file.

Once your program is running, test it out! Play around with it a few times. You can run it again once it is done by pressing the up arrow key to copy your last command, then pressing Enter.

If you have any questions about this tutorial, please let me know and I will try to help you out. Below is a version of the code without any comments.

import random

correct = random.randint(1, 10)

guess = input("Enter your guess: ")
guess = int(guess)

while guess != correct:
    if guess > correct:
        print("You've guessed too high. Try guessing lower.")
    else:
        print("You've guessed too low. Try guessing higher.")

    guess = int(input("Enter your guess: "))

print("Congratulations! You've guessed correctly.")

Resources

4 Ways Technology Has Changed Our Lives for the Better

Ben Soyka — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 03:45:00 +0000

Ah, technology. It’s taken over many aspects of our lives, and it seems like it’s here to stay. While modern technology may have some cons to it, it helps us even more.

Technology has changed communication

Technology has improved communication, especially in recent years. We’ll always have so much information readily available at our fingertips.

Writing letters to relatives living hundreds of miles away is so old-school! Instead, you can talk to them through a video call or instant messaging. This change in communication has completely changed relationships all over the world.

Services like Facebook and Twitter have also become a big part of our everyday lives. These sites allow people to see a lot of information and photos at once and are enjoyable by design.

When you upload a photo to the Internet, it doesn’t simply go away. It stays for a long time. This means you can use technology to store memories that are important to you, like family photos.

Being a kid is different now

Children growing up in modern times can have a much better education. Technology can make the classroom environment much more interactive and exciting for students. For example, instead of reviewing vocabulary with normal flashcards, students could use sites such as Quizlet.

Kids can also do their part around the house much easier with technology. Instead of hand-washing every single dish, many families have the option to use a dishwasher. Instead of sweeping or vacuuming the whole house, you can just turn on a Roomba!

We’re much healthier with technology

With modern technology, we can live much healthier lives. Those who have fitness trackers can see how active they are. Seeing that can encourage us to be even more active. Some fitness trackers like the Apple Watch even gamify health with competitions and points!

New technology can help create cures and medicines. Someone who is sick in modern times is much more likely to be cured than someone in past times.

Technology has changed the meaning of ‘productivity’

Modern technology can automate just about anything, from turning on a light to ordering a pizza. With automation, we can do so much more in such a small amount of time. For example, you can use your voice to start the coffee maker while you’re still getting dressed.

Transportation is also much quicker. Instead of taking a horse-drawn carriage, you can rush down the highway at 60 miles an hour in a car.

Our lives are so different when we have modern technology on our side. We can communicate better, do more, be healthier, and live better lives overall.

How to Start a New Open-Source Project

Ben Soyka — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 19:45:29 +0000

Starting a completely new open-source project is a lot of work, but it's much easier once you know the basics, and it's 100% worth the effort.

This article aims to teach you everything there is to know about starting and maintaining an open-source project, but it is not focused on the programming aspect. Rather, you will learn everything from getting contributors for your project to maintaining it over time.

Why Open Source?

First of all, why should you even share your project's source code in the first place? There are many benefits to open-sourcing your project!

Working together

Great minds think alike, and the only way to attract those great minds is to share your work rather than keeping it under lock and key.

When you invite others to work on your project, your project can improve with the help of more great ideas and code from others.

Transparency

When potential users see that you share your source code, they'll have a certain sense of security. After all, if you aren't afraid to share the source, then it's fairly obvious you aren't hiding anything malicious.

Transparency also means that anyone at all can see how you accomplished your project's goals, and they may even use the same concepts in their own code.

Adding to your résumé

By making your project open-source, you're allowing potential employers (and anyone else) to see how you work.

Showing that you have a great open-source project under your belt can help you get a great job in the future.

What Are You Providing?

Before you even begin work on your project, there are two questions you should ask yourself. The first is, "What will this project accomplish?" Begin with the end in mind and have a clear vision of what your work will actually do.

The second question you need to ask yourself is, "Why do people need this?" Your project should provide some sort of value to others.

Don't just copy

An important part of providing a valuable resource is that it shouldn't be a copy of another project.

If another project with the same general features as your idea already exists, but isn't well maintained or updated, you may still be providing value to your users! The same applies if you want to add or change features to improve on the concept of another similar project.

Laying the Groundwork

You can't expect everyone to understand what you're trying to accomplish without a proper starting point. You have to lay some of the groundwork first if you expect others to be able to contribute.

Choosing a name

The name you pick for your project will represent your work for all to see. It should unique, easy to remember, and related to the project's goal.

For example, Sentry monitors apps for crashes and bugs. The name Sentry is easy to remember and clearly represents what the app does.

It all starts with a README

Start off by making a detailed and concise README file that tells the most important things about your project. Most people who see your project will start with the README, so it's important that you share all you need to share.

You'll know your README is complete when someone is able to use the basic functionality of your project without looking at the code or too much documentation.

The README should include what your project is, what it looks like in action, how to use it, and any other relevant details. Just remember that the README should be as short as it can be without being any shorter. You may also want to add in details on contributing and license information.

The Make a README website has a template you can use to get your README file started.

Getting the code started

It's a good idea to start coding yourself so others know a bit more about your project, what to expect, and if they want to lend a hand.

This also means you'll be able to publish a beta-type version of your project to increase visibility.

Begin with well-formatted code and even throw in some comments. This will help others understand the thinking that went into the code as well as what the purpose of the project is.

Picking a license

Without a license, no one will really be able to contribute to your project. A great resource for choosing a license is the website Choose an open source license by GitHub, which gives you great info on each license option available to you.

The most common licenses used in open-source software are the MIT License, the Apache License 2.0, and the GNU General Public License v3.0. Each license features unique permissions, conditions, and limitations, so it's always best to look carefully for the license that's right for your project.

Contributing guidelines

It's important to establish clear contributing guidelines so that others know how they can help out with your project. This is often placed in a file named CONTRIBUTING or CONTRIBUTING.md in the root directory to make the guidelines easy to find.

You may want to include information telling:

How to file a bug report
How to request a feature
How to set up a development environment and run tests

Your contributing guidelines should be kept short and sweet, while still mentioning everything that needs to be included.

Documenting your work

Even if you don't start off with much code, it's important to document everything you do from the start.

You can even make your documentation part of your project's source code so that other contributors can add to it when they add to the code.

Tools like GitHub Pages and Read the Docs allow you to host documentation on a nice-looking site for no cost at all.

Hosting the Project

Once you have a project ready to share, you'll need a place to share it. The most commonly used site for this is GitHub, although there are many other options such as GitLab or Bitbucket.

All of the sites listed are fairly easy to use, but you'll probably need to learn a bit about Git if you want to start an open-source project. You can take a look at the in-depth article "Getting started with Git and GitHub: the complete beginner's guide" by Anne Bonner for a fantastic tutorial on how to get started with Git and GitHub.

Drawing Attention

A project can only grow if other people want it to. You have to share your idea with the world so you can get a few contributors and users to get your project started.

Once your project gets going, you may want to share the news on Reddit, Hacker News, Quora, or other sites to attract a few users who are interested in what you have to offer.

GitHub issues

One neat feature of GitHub is the Issues section. From GitHub's guide page on Issues:

"Issues are a great way to keep track of tasks, enhancements, and bugs for your projects. They're kind of like email — except they can be shared and discussed with the rest of your team. Most software projects have a bug tracker of some kind. GitHub's tracker is called Issues, and has its own section in every repository."

One advantage of using GitHub Issues is that you can add the "good first issue" and "help wanted" labels to make issues more discoverable.

Sites like Up For Grabs (which is even open-source itself!) even aggregate issues with these labels to encourage others to contribute to new projects. This is one big way to get some collaborators on your project who want to help out.

Continued Maintenance and Development

Once your project picks up more steam, there'll be more to it than just writing code. If all goes well, you'll end up growing a sizable community around your project.

With a large community, you have to be professional and polite at all times. After all, the more people stay enthusiastic about your project, the more contributors you'll get and the more your work will grow. After some time, your project will grow to be the work of an entire community, not just you.

Here's a good guide on "Best Practices for Maintainers."

Conclusion

Starting an maintaining an open-source project can be a lot of work, but it's worth it. By sharing a new project with the world, you could be helping so many people, not just yourself. These projects can then grow to become something bigger and better, and you can get some happiness from knowing that you started something that people can depend on and help with.

Resources

Open Source Guides: Fantastic guides to expand even more on the topics in this article
GitHub.com Help: All you'll need to learn how to use GitHub

Starting an HTTP Server in Seconds With Just 2 Lines of Code

Ben Soyka — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 19:26:52 +0000

When I’m developing a website on my PC, I like to be able to test out the design on multiple devices — occasionally sharing it live with people around the world.

Recently, I developed a simple batch script to do two things: start an HTTP server and open up a tunnel to the server so anyone on the internet can access it.

Prerequisites

There are a few things you’ll need to have set up before starting your HTTP server:

Windows PC

The main code in this article is made in a DOS batch (.bat) file, which is only available on PCs.

Python 2 or 3

Python will be used to start the server on your localhost. You can use either Python 2.x or Python 3.x. You’ll also need to make sure it’s added to your PATH when you install it.

There’s only a minor change you’ll need to make to the code if you choose to use a version of Python 2.

ngrok

To open up a tunnel to your local machine from the rest of the web, we’ll use ngrok. It’s free and fairly easy to install and use, but make sure you add it to your PATH as well.

The code

To help us understand what’s going on here, we’ll take a look at each line of the code.

Starting the server

As mentioned earlier, we’ll use Python to start up a local HTTP server.

The code above starts a new command prompt window running Python’s http.server module on port 80. This means the contents of the folder you run this command in will now be served at http://localhost:80.

If you’re using a version of Python 2, all you need to do is replace http.server with SimpleHTTPServer.

Opening a tunnel to localhost

We’ll use ngrok to open up a tunnel to the server running on your localhost. This means anyone who visits your auto-generated ngrok URL will see your local server running on Python.

Setting it all up

To use this script, you’ll want to save it to a folder in the PATH variable. This means you’ll be able to use it from anywhere on your computer.

Adding Files to the PATH on Windows 10

Ben Soyka ・ Oct 6 ・ 2 min read

#windows #windows10 #path

To actually use the script, click on the address bar in the File Explorer, type in the name of the script as you saved it — with or without the file extension — and press Enter.

Alternatively, you can open a Command Prompt window, navigate to the folder you’d like to host, and run the script from there.

This simple script can make your life a whole lot easier when it comes to developing a website. With just a few clicks, you can start a server and see how your site looks on a variety of devices.

Adding Files to the PATH on Windows 10

Ben Soyka — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 19:15:31 +0000

As a Windows user, you'll often find the need to add executables and other files to your system PATH. This means you can access them from any location in the command prompt.

Often, program installers will do this for you. For example, the Python installer has a checkbox to add Python to your PATH variable automatically.

In the case you need to manually add to your PATH, here are some simple instructions:

Make/find a folder

You can't directly add files to the PATH variable, only folders. So, start off by finding the folder where your file is located.

If you simply downloaded the file, it's recommended that you make a folder in another location such as your Documents folder.

Get the folder path

By clicking on the "address bar" in the file explorer, you can get the folder’s path.

Navigate to "Advanced system settings"

Right-click on the Windows logo to show a new menu. Choose the "System" option. Once the Settings app opens up, choose the "System info" link.

This will open up a Control Panel page where you can view information about your device, and more importantly, change a few advanced settings. Click the appropriate link to visit that menu.

Once here, click on the button at the bottom to open the Environment Variables menu. With this new menu open, select the PATH variable in the first list and click the Edit button.

Press the New button, paste in the folder path from earlier, and press Enter. Press OK a few times and you're done!

Now that you've added your folder to the PATH variable, any files you add there will be accessible from the command prompt no matter where you are on your computer.

What Is Open Source Software?

Ben Soyka — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 19:02:08 +0000

Open source software is software that anyone can inspect, change, and share with others.

Code is the part of a program that most users don’t have to see. It shows how the program functions, like a recipe.

When someone makes their code open source, they are letting anyone take a look at it and make changes.

What’s the difference from other types of software?

Some other software is more restricted. This is typically called proprietary or closed-source software.

A couple examples of this are Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop. Both of these were made by separate companies, and their code isn’t shared with the world for anyone to see.

Different programs can also come with different licenses. The license for a program determines how — or if — people can use, share, or change the code.

How can open source software help?

Open source software can help in a myriad of ways. Here are a few:

Control over function

Since users can see and change how the program works, they can have more control over how it works.

Learning new skills

Contributing to open source projects is a great way for beginning programmers to learn more skills and get more experience.

More secure

When anyone has the ability to spot a bug in the code, any issues can be resolved very quickly. It’s like having hundreds more eyes inspecting your code to make sure it runs smoothly.

Build a community

This one may not seem as important, but larger open source projects start to build up a community of contributors over time. Contributors can talk about parts of the project in a friendly manner, making discussions much more productive and smooth.

Isn’t open source software just free of charge?

This is a common misconception about open source software. While open source software is free most of the time, people can make their code cost money too.

It all depends on the license chosen for a piece of software. If the license says that anyone can modify and use the program in private, then they can do that.

Where can I find open source software on the web?

One of the largest websites where you can find open source programs is GitHub. You can also take a look at GitLab to name a couple.

GitHub provides hosting for projects using Git for version control. Git keeps track of all changes in a set of files and helps with managing both small and large projects.

Overall, open source software can make a huge difference in how programmers create and share their code. By sharing code with others, you can improve it and make it better than it ever was before.

Meet BrainBot! 🧠🤖

Ben Soyka — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 18:30:17 +0000

BrainBot is a fun new bot for Ryver, a team communication platform. It's written in Python using the pyryver module and uses an existing account to log in.

The bot's main feature is its ability to bring in a random and fun conversation starter to liven up a group chat on Ryver.

BrainBot is looking for contributors, and we'd love your help.

The bot is open-source on GitHub and usually has a handful of open issues you can work on to improve the BrainBot experience for everyone.

All you need to do to get started is visit the bsoyka/brainbot repo on GitHub:

bsoyka / brainbot

A simple and fun Ryver bot to liven up the conversation

BrainBot

A simple and fun Ryver bot to liven up the conversation

Usage

First of all, clone this repo to your local machine.

$ git clone https://github.com/bsoyka/brainbot.git
...
$ cd brainbot

Now, make sure you have all the requirements installed and up-to-date:

$ pip install --upgrade -r requirements.txt

Next up, you'll need to set up some environment variables. Copy or rename the .env.example file to .env and fill in the values.

Finally, run the bot with this simple command:

$ python main.py

Take a look at the BrainBot wiki to learn how to use the bot once it's up and running.

Contributors ✨

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

Ben Soyka
💻 🤔 📖 🚧 👀

LukeG294
💻 🤔 👀

Swapnil Jha
💻

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!

View on GitHub

If you have any questions about using or contributing to BrainBot, feel free to ask in a comment or email brainbot@bsoyka.me!