npbc VS processing

Well, there will probably be problems in your life that have a programming solution. For example, we subscribe to something like 5 newspapers billed monthly but with different prices per paper per weekday. We verify the vendor's calculations and it's bit of a chore. Perfect thing to automate with a script!

Another good example is command line arguments. I got started with argv and argc and wrote a rudimentary application with that. At some point I decided to migrate it to Python, and continued to use sys.argv there. Now, we (family) rely on that application, and I use argparse (Python) most of the time. In the context of this application, I'm currently learning about deployment and distribution (hence you'll find my makeshift "installation" instructions in the README). Once I figure that out, I'll switch to a existing tried and tested system.

I'm currently on a new version of the newspaper bill calculator (https://github.com/eccentricOrange/npbc) and it's still teaching me tons (more file i/o, good/bad practices, databases, regex, CI/CD, different kinds of UI like CLIs etc etc)...

The primary purpose of this project is for me to learn to use Flask. It usually takes me 4-5 ~rewrites~ revisions of a project to make it have some structure, and this one is only in v2. I've also had to learn a lot of stuff (Flask, virtually all of JS, some 80% of the CSS, the whole concept of a front- and back-end being split between a CLI and a browser, datetime module), so it's been somewhat tough to build as well. I don't always code like this.

The full codebase is available. At this point, I've completed most of the changes I need to make to the actual code, and push it to GitHub. https://github.com/eccentricOrange/npbc/tree/5c529dacbef0f9a1f8915a49dcca47834204aa09

Link: https://github.com/eccentricOrange/npbc/tree/efd5f37b82a42437a9ed0d61d20a8455dce6f0e0

This post is not a request for review, but if you want to get a sense of the size/number of files, here is a GitHub repo at a specific commit (so that all discussion is consistent). Is it okay to make a post requesting a review of this code? If not, do you know a place I could request someone to take a look?

Make sure that the "complex" problem you're solving is the same as your end goal. That's my main motivator: if I need an app to calculate newspaper bills, I need it. Learning about OOP (for example) outside of a problem where I really benefit from having it doesn't work so well for me.

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I disagree. There are so many creative tools that are now online that you can access from your browser that were not envisioned in the original web. It is obviously true that not EVERY website is about creation (but to expect that seems unreasonable?), but even Wikipedia is a collaborative project.

Examples include products from big vendors like Adobe's Photoshop, to smaller products like SketchUp, to more indy generative art tools like https://processing.org and Strudel (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39924210).

Would processing[0] be a good fit? It's designed to be easy to use and learn but powerful enough for professional use. Very quick to get cool stuff moving on a screen and the syntax is Java with a streamlined editing environment.

[0] https://processing.org/

I would personally use the language Processing. It's the one I use the most. And it's relatively easy to start drawing text, squares, and do other kinds of things. (It's kind of like java, but without all the boilerplate code)

Processing (P5) had this: you can select any string of text in its IDE anl search for it in the docs, and if it's one of the built-in functions or constants it will open the associated static html page that came installed with the software, so no internet nor server required. And despite being offline you can still navigate the docs too. This feels a lost basic skill in static site generation these days.

It was the only creative coding framework that had complete, offline documentation like that at the time I might add. OpenFrameworks is still mostly autogenerated stubs for example.

IMO it was one of the things that gave Processing an edge in educational contexts over all alternatives. I was pretty sad to see p5.js not fully continue that tradition and require that you go online to read the docs, and that it's not a static website but that text is rendered with javascript when you open it (still complete and with examples though).

https://processing.org/

https://p5js.org/

Processing is very cool, especially if you like graphics.

https://processing.org/

Processing is a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code. Since 2001, Processing has promoted software literacy within the visual arts and visual literacy within technology. There are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning and prototyping.

And it's not even their IDE. They just slapped some AVR compilers into Processing

https://processing.org/