DEV Community: Wasi Master

5 Python Tips That New Programmer Would Love

Wasi Master — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 18:31:29 +0000

So you’re new to python programming? and you want some tips? then you’ve come to the right place. In this post I’ll provide 5 python tips that I see beginners make a lot. And trust me when I say this, I’ve taught a lot (and I mean a lot!) of people. I’ve seen a immense range of code ranging from pure beauty to absolute trash.

1. Follow PEP-8

PEP-8 is a PEP (Python Enhancement Proposal) that suggests coding conventions for python code. Like a style guide for python code. Code is read much more often that it’s written, and you should try to make your code as readable as possible, even for you. The guide can be found at www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/, and you can see a more beautified version at pep8.org

2. Ask good questions

In your journey you’ll often get stuck doing something. Especially if you try to code by yourself. In this situation you might want to search online for solutions first. Then if there aren’t any solutions you may be tempted to ask someone, maybe in a Discord server, maybe some friend you know that does programming. In any case, you should always ask good questions, there is a great guide from stackoverflow that’ll help you with this. And don’t ask a XY problem

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

- Francis Bacon

3. Don’t do `import ` or `from … import `

Now at first you may think, importing everything makes it so easy, less typing, less hassle. But let me stop you right there. This may seem like it’ll make it easy, but you’ll regret it later down the line. Doing this makes it hard to figure out which functions are imported (and from where), and which functions are custom defined. It also makes it hard for 3rd party tools like pyflakes to do static analysis with your imports. This WILL import a lot of stuff you’ll never use and will clutter up the namespace. As a concrete example, many users of NumPy have been bitten by numpy.any shadowing any when they do from numpy import *. According to the Zen of Python:

Explicit is better than implicit.

And even the official documentation for python discourages this

4. Read the documentation

Beginners, especially people whose native language is not English, don’t really want to read the documentation on stuff. Now this can be a very bad thing. You should always use what’s given to you. Reading documentation could bring out details you never could have otherwise found out. If you can’t find anything in the documentation you might also want to look at the source code. But the main thing is you should learn to read the documentation. If your English is weak then you may want to use Google Translate’s website translation tool

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

- Dr. Seuss

5. Always following tutorials

Tutorials can be good, tutorials can be bad. Specially in the case of programming. There are always more than one way to do things and if a tutorial shows a way that is bad then you’ll learn it and remember it thinking it is really good but in reality it was not that good. Always research on your own first, I’ve seen countless outdated tutorials that show stuff that used ot exist but don’t exist anymore, see if the tutorial you’re watching is recent or not. And try not relying on tutorials too much since you want to make stuff yourself and not be taught like a puppet what to do. In the real world there won’t be a guide you can just follow and everything would be done just by itself

No one achieves great things by following the crowd. Have a spine. Strike your own path.

- Robert Kiyosaki

and

It’s easy to stand with the crowd, it takes courage to stand alone.

- Gandhi

How I Made a Website That Removes Ads, Bypasses Paywalls for Articles

Wasi Master — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 04:41:02 +0000

Yesterday I built a simple website that takes in a URL and removes all ads and paywalled content and you can host it locally. The UI is very nice and pleasing. It uses google's User-Agent to pretend it's google and gets the same content that the URL would give to google.

Motive

I read a lot of articles, some of them have a paywall. And I don't really want to pay money to just read one article. If it was something I use daily then I could consider paying for it but for only once, no. So I usually go to 12ft.io for that but that website doesn't work for New York Times so I wondered if there were any alternatives. Then I thought to myself why wouldn't I be able to make one myself? So here we are now.

Their Implementation

I first scrolled to the bottom of the 12ft.io page and saw an explanation of how it works:

The idea is pretty simple, news sites want Google to index their content so it shows up in search results. So they don't show a paywall to the Google crawler. We benefit from this because the Google crawler will cache a copy of the site every time it crawls it. All we do is show you that cached, un-paywalled version of the page.

So it depends on google crawler's cache? Cool. But what if the site isn't cached? I tried it with my own blog and it worked but couldn't show the full page for some reason.

My Implementation

So they load the cached version of the page the google crawler loaded.
My website pretends to be the google crawler and no caching is required. And it can optionally cache those pages locally and there's no need for google to get involved.

So how to use it?

You can click the image below to go to the GitHub repo containing the project and in there you'll find instructions on how to set this up and how to use it.

How to Remember So Many Programming Languages

Wasi Master — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 18:27:34 +0000

If you saw my previous post on how I learn new programming languages you may be wondering how (or even if) I remember all these programming languages, now this is a valid question as the saying goes "Jack of all trades and master of none though oftentimes better than master of one". That's exactly what I am gonna discuss today

About the saying...

Jack of all trades and master of none though oftentimes better than master of one

From Wikipedia: "Jack of all trades, master of none" is a figure of speech used about a person who has dabbled in many skills, rather than gaining expertise by focusing on one.

Read this wikipedia article to learn more.

This is the same for me to some extent, I know a bunch of programming languages but I would not say I am a master of any of them other than Python. I can say that in other languages I know enough to do simple tasks, things like Data Types, Variables, Keywords, Logical and Arithmetical Operators, If else conditions, Loops, Arrays, Functions. But just knowing that isn't gonna make you a master in any language.

So what do I need to become the master

Standard Library

The first thing is to learn the standard library it has and what you can do with those. For example the python standard library documentation contains more than 200 libraries (Run help('modules') in repl) and the node.js built-in module list has more than 25. There are stuff like stringprep, rlcompleter, tabnanny, reprlib, linecache, imghdr, fileinput, contextvars, mmap are just to name a few that are unheard of in normal day to day coding.

3rd party libraries

Another thing to know to become a master is 3rd party libraries, these are not officially made by the language developers.

For python things like requests, pylint/flake8/pep8, numpy, pandas, Django/flask, Pillow, matplotlib

Being able to make (almost) anything

You should be able to code stuff easily as long as it isn't based on other things such as mathematics.

What about you?

I would say I am a "master" in python and nothing else really, I do sure know a lot of stuff but I would not consider myself a master in most of those. Even then there are things that I still don't know and am discovering regularly in python. I often see myself searching google for stuff in other languages since I forget them but googling shouldn't be seen as a bad thing. The main purpose is to make something. Things I use frequently are things I remember and things I don't use frequently, I often forget.

To be able to forget means sanity.
- Jack London, The Star Rover

What about me?

So if you want to remember stuff you have to practice. Once I had stopped using python for a month and after that, I had to try to remember some stuff and search google because I forgot them. Practice makes perfect.

How Do I Learn New Programming Languages So Easily?

Wasi Master — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 16:16:46 +0000

So if you see my linkedin profile You may see that I know a lot of programming languages and frameworks. And you may (or may not) be wondering how I learned all those at such a young age or do I even know all those. The answer to the first question will be given in this post and the answer to the second question would be given in my next post

Prerequisites to learn new programming languages

The first thing I'd suggest is for you to become fluent in coding fundamentals. After you learn to code in one programming language, other languages will be easier to learn.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
- Chinese proverb

You should start with one than learn more. You must remember, computational thinking and the coding fundamentals apply to every programming language no matter the complexity. If you already know one language you can move on the learning new languages.

First learn the basics

First, learn the basics of the language then move on to libraries and frameworks. At first, if you start with too much then you will give up easily. A good site to learn the basics of a programming language really fast is learnxinyminutes Or if you want a broader selection containing programming languages, frameworks mathematics, etc. check out codecademy's list of cheat sheets

Then code something

The next thing you should do is to code something other than Hello World. Try new projects, see a list of projects to code and pick one then try it. You should try a few more projects until you think you understand all concepts. I keep a git repository of all of these projects I do, You may also want to do the same. Speaking of understanding all concepts

You must make sure you understand what you're doing

The common mistake I often see beginners make is that they use tutorials too much, I do agree tutorials are good for teaching a specific thing in a specific way. But for programming, you must be creative and be able to build your own stuff too not just stuff made by others in tutorials. Copying code from StackOverflow is also similar, You should not copy code you don't understand, trust me it will cause issues later down the line.

General tips

Read the documentation This is something I see a lot of people hate especially people just starting out with programming. documentation is important and you must take advantage of it.
Coding challenges You should try coding challenges with your new language with sites such as leetcode, exercism, edabit, project euler, codewars, codingame
Find a coding partner Find someone that codes in the language you want to learn, this can be a irl friend, family, or even a discord buddy
Learn to ask for help Whatever language you wish to learn be sure to ask for help when you get stuck somewhere, this can be in stackoverflow or Google or ask in programming specific reddit and Discord communities
Take breaks You don't have to sit in front of a computer for hours and hours at a time. Try to take breaks and do the other things you have to do except programming. Sometimes you spend hours and hours to find the bug but you don't get the solution for your code so it's good to take a short break. It will restore your focus and help you find solutions to your problems

About Myself

Wasi Master — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 18:00:00 +0000

You somehow have stumbled across my blog and are wondering who is this guy? Is he even a real person? Or you just don't care and want to go on about your life in that case feel free to click away. In this post, I'll give an introduction to myself and share some details about my job what I do, what I don't do, and some nice information about myself with some facts

Who am I?

You may know me by my internet pseudonym, Wasi Master. In fact, some may even know my real name is Arian Mollik Wasi. I am a young dude from Bangladesh who is always trying out new things, I am very passionate about programming. I also like 3D Modelling, Animation, Photography, Music, etc.

What do I do?

I am just a 9th grader living in Bangladesh. I currently do not have any job and am not looking for any either. I just want to increase my experience in the things I love and focus on the things I want. I also try to keep at least some basic knowledge in a lot of other fields as well. I love what I do and I am happy with my life.

What am I good at?

I love programming in general, I mostly code in Python but I do know a lot of other languages just in case I ever need to understand some code written in those languages as well. I do have excellent knowledge of computers and I can google my way out of problems. I also know adequate English that helps me do all this. I help my friends and family fix all kinds of tech issues and I'm mostly well-liked by them. I believe everyone can do something very well. Here's a quote from Einstein

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein

What am I bad at?

I would say I am not very good at talking slowly 😅.

What is the most important thing in my life?

I think the most important thing in my life at the moment is proper education. So I'll try to focus on education more in the next few years and keep using my computer at a minimum.

Who are the most important people in my life?

I would say some of the most important people in my life are my younger brother who does not like me at all but I love him and he is very smart compared to other kids I see, so that cheers me up. My mother and father also play a big role in my life. And my home tutor has taught me some important life lessons that I'll never forget

What’s my definition of success?

I like to define success as the opposite of failure. My favorite quote about success is one from Stephen Hawking

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.
- Stephen Hawking

What personal achievements am I most proud of?

I would consider pypi-command-line, my discord bot, my website, and my coding challenges repo. I have a bunch of other projects too

How do I want others to see me?

I want others to see me as a happy, kind, and caring person. I do not want to be hated like others so I try not to hate others

Behind every successful person lies a pack of Haters!
- Eminem

What do I think about myself?

I think of myself as a good person and not an evil one. I try to do good deeds whenever I can. And I like to spread positivity

If I have one year left to live, what would I do?

I'll try to visit places that I really want to visit. I'll also try to pay my debts and apologize to people.

If I have one week left to live, what would I do?

I'll do anything I want, and be reckless I guess. I'd also apologize to people if I owe them an apology.

If I have one day left to live, what would I do?

I'd make sure my friends and family know about this and then spend the day with them

If I have one minute left to live, what would I do?

I'll just sleep for one whole minute and think about what I have done in my life.

Viewing python packages' information directly from the terminal

Wasi Master — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:22:39 +0000

Why do I need this?

As a programmer, you probably know how to use a terminal. Sometimes you just don't want to have to open up a browser only to check how many downloads your favorite python package has, or you just wanna see how to do something in a specific library such as django or maybe you want to see if a package exists and see it's description before you install it. I've also faced these issues so I went out to create my own library to interface PyPI within a terminal.

I do not earn nor do I want to earn any gains from this, this is purely for the users' productivity

How does it look?

Here's an example of how the information command looks:

And for the search command:

For screenshots of all the other 15+ commands, be sure to check out the documentation

How does it work?

How the information command works is that it uses the PyPI API to fetch general information about the package. Then it uses the GitHub API to get information such as the stars, forks, size, etc. Then, at last, it uses the PyPI Stats API to get the download count per month, week, and day. Then it combines all these to form a beautiful display with rich colors, panels, hyperlinks, and much more! It also implements caching logic so usage in long coding sessions can stay smoother than ever!

How do I install it?

You can install it just by running

pip install pypi-command-line

Then you can use the pypi -h command to test it out. For more information see the installation page on the docs

And to test out the package info feature you can run.

pypi info Django

`Django is just, for example, you can see info for any package on pypi

Can I see the source code, please?

The source code is available on GitHub: wasi-master/pypi-command-line

{% github wasi-master/pypi-command-line %}

Ending Notes

But wait there's more, It has tons of smart features that help you in many ways, It has a lot of other commands too such as browse , information , description , search , wheels , releases , largest-files , regex-search , version , cache-info , cache-refresh , cache-clear , new-packages , new-releases , read-the-docs