Comment by anthonyb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anthonyb | Hacker News Reader

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There's really not much difference between a script and a program, other than size/features. A program just has a few more added :) It perhaps seems like there's some extra sauce if you're looking in from the outside, but it's really just a case of iterating, adding stuff and polishing the "out of the box" experience.

Minor plug - I actually wrote a book which I think follows the pattern that you're looking for: http://manning.com/briggs/

It's essentially completely ass-backwards if you're used to traditional programming books, in that you don't learn everything about Python up front. Instead, it's a bunch of small-ish practical projects, and you learn as you go.

Chapter 6 is an adventure game, and chapter 10 turns it into an networked MUD via twisted - it sounds like what you're trying to do. But there's also business stuff - csv parsing, etc. - an asteroids clone, writing a web app in Django and so on.

The book looks awesome, thanks a lot for the link!

Just yesterday, I started teaching my co-founder how to code in python, and wanted to very quickly get to something useful to give him inspiration to keep going.

I ended up starting with the python interpreter for ~30 min, followed by writing a very short program to show a random inspirational quote on the command line, and then turned it into a module so we could import it back in the interpreter. The end goal was to show how programs get built up from smaller pieces and can become more and more complex.

I think he really started to get it once we added a few test functions to test the different range of inputs to his "get_quote" function.

Next time, I'm going to show him Django via simple demo site and hopefully he'll be at the point where he can start editing HTML. (I'll either use https://github.com/mpdaugherty/django-demo-project, which displays quotes and demonstrates views and templates, or https://github.com/mpdaugherty/RateBeers, which rates beers and adds in some DB models, depending on how far he gets).

>"There's really not much difference between a script and a program, other than size/features."

Saying so is the luxury of having reached the tipping point!

You sold a copy of your book, so plug justified. It looks interesting. Hopefully it can fill in a few gaps. Thanks.

Cool! :)

Don't forget that there's an author forum if you get stuck and need a hand. I check in every day or two.

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