Exercism-Python
This repo is about all my exercices from https://exercism.io/my/tracks/python
My journey with python and exercism.io
Why did I chose to do some code exercises ?
I'll soon have to look for an internship and with the current competencies that I've got at Epitech, I don't feel like it's enough to ask for a good internship. And i wanted to learn a bunch of cool stuff.
Why python ?
Because it's simple and fast (to code).
When coding, I like to keep my main focus on the problem solving part and after a bit of research I found out that python was a good tool for that usage.
Because it was going to be useful to me
Python is one of the main programming languages used in "AI" which is the field I'd like to work in.
Because it's fun !
Learning a new programming language looks like hard work but it turns out its often fun (at least it is for me)
Why Exercism ?
Because it has an API
Exercism has an api that integrates into your computer with a packet you install. It allows you to download exercises via simple terminal commands like ''exercism download --exercise=space-age --track=python''
Where --exercise= is the exercise and --track= is the programming language.
It's fast to verify is you're doing the right thing
Exercism allows you to run test files by using the pytest command in your terminal, the exercises come with a test suite that once ran, allow you to see if you're passing the tests the exercise was made for.
An understandable readme.md
A readme.me allows you to understand the exercise and show you what you need to code to make it work. It is often well formatted and helps to have a clear understanding of the subject
It doesn't want an Std output
Unlike many other coding-exercice website, Exercism doesn't require you to print something, it just requires what your code is supposed to return when called, meaning you have to return a list if you're supposed to return one and can't cheat the system by printing the supposed output.
My workflow
Git
I've chosen to upload all my exercices to Github once completed here to that recruiters can look at my code and just be astonished by the sheere size of my brain and my huge algorithmitic solving capabilities.
VsCode
Visual Studio Code is the editor i've chosen to code these in. It allows me to have a direct keybind to run the tests and check where i'm at. Also the linter MagicPython is just the best.
Do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it
This website allows me to work on the exercice I want whenever I want. There's a lot of exercices for me to work on so if one bores me I can just switch to another exercice instead. And that's a big plus.
Some examples of what i've learned
One exercice that particularly stood out to me was the isogram exercice, where you needed to code a program that would return True is a given string was an isogram or not. An isogram is a string or a word that only contains a letter once.
def is_isogram(string: str):
string = string.lower().replace(' ', '').replace('-', '')
return len(string) == len(set(string))How does it work ?
The function called is_isogram will return True is the string passed (namely string) is an isogram.
The return statement, with double equals == means that it will return True if the condition named after is also True . If not, it will return False
string = string.lower().replace(' ', '').replace('-', '')This means I redefine the string by setting it to lowercase letters only, replacing the blankspaces and dashes with nothing.
return len(string) == len(set(string))Here the condition has to be true to return True.
The function len() will get the lenght of the evaluated string (string) and return its value as an integer
This len() function has to be equal to the len() of the set() of string. set() is a function that will return an iterable without the duplicated in it. abbc -> abc
Therefore, if our string passed as argument contains a duplicate, the len() of the set() and the normal string wouldn't be equal and the program would return False.
Conclusion
This coding journey has been really beneficial. I've learned loads and loads of things and am still learning new things each day. Code that used to take me 20 lines could now only take me about 4 or 5 and i've also learned a lot about the logic behind the resolution of problems and also the structure of the python programming language.
Thank you
For taking the time to read all of this article. If you have any questions or suggestions about it feel free to send me an email at: thomas.camlong@epitech.eu