This week, I’ve learned s a little about web scraping with Python as well as trying to better acquaint myself with the ins and outs of NSCalendar in iOS.

I’ve split my time this week working on different projects. I’ve got two projects in the pipeline, one small and one large, if albeit that one is also starting out as small. I’m also working on the upcoming update for studyBreak, which includes translation into 3 new languages, performance improvements, user-defined reminders, and the exporting of statistics. It’s a lot to do but rather than just grind out one project, I’ve decided to do bit by bit on each project, depending on how I feel. That’s the great thing about Object Oriented Programming — you can just work on little blocks at a time without feeling like you’re leaving things incomplete when you go to work on something else.

One of the projects I’m working on requires me to build a template to be populated with information from different sources. At the moment, the source will be the web, hence why I’ve spent some time learning how to web scrape with Python this week. I found a very good tutorial series on YouTube from a user named Chris Reeves. It’s good because it’s straight to the point and gives you exactly what you need, without going into too much explanation. I understand that this can be frustrating for those that don’t know too much about programming, but for those of us that are already familiar with other languages, we don’t need to know every minute detail about a new language, we just need to know how to do what we want to do. That’s one thing to keep in mind about programming, and one thing I like to keep reminding myself of — people don’t want programs or code, they want solutions. A computer program is a solution, and often people don’t care about the specifics of that solution, they just care that it solves the problem they’re presented with.

I have to say that I quite like Python as a programming language, not to mention the infinite possibilities one has when working with the wealth of information on the web. Programming for iOS has, in a way, pigeonholed me into a mindset that I can or can’t do something, as determined by what is allowed by the Apple iOS ecosystem. I think that anyone that works exclusively with one platform or one language will experience a similar thing. So taking a break from iOS, and looking at Python has reminded me of the infinite capabilities that knowing how to code offers. I also feel like I’m coding more now, because I’m thinking about algorithms on how to automate things that would take forever if done manually. Working with iOS, sometimes I’ve felt like I’m just grinding out code to get a quick brute force solution for a problem that I might have with a particular app.

Talking of iOS, I have to say that I don’t like the way that NSDates & NSCalendars work. It’s confusing. It would be so easy if there was a function for Monday or Tuesday, and to find out what day a given date was, it was only necessary to send the receiver a message such as .isMonday or .isTuesday. There isn’t such functionality, however, and you have to implement workarounds with what Apple has provided. That being said, I think I’m going to write a code snippet to provide that functionality as in the future it would make things so much easier. For now, however, I’m stuck with learning how Apple has done it, then trying to figure out how to translate that into what I want and what will work with my program.

As for resources this week, I’ve already mentioned the YouTube user Chris Reeves. Aside from his tutorials I’ve just been using Google and Stackoverflow so I don’t have anything else for you guys, but come back next week for more!

Kenechi

Blog address - http://learnscode.kenechi.org
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6aCKjVJtXvnI-s2yDYYcOg