Weekly Python Learning Recap – Week 2

Continuing a set of journal entries where I’m working through Automate the Boring Stuff with Python to strengthen my logic and programming skills. Been in management for close to 6 years now and I’m beginning to feel my logic skills atrophy. I’m hoping that by working through this book on a weekly basis while practicing Leetcode-style questions will help sharpen those skills to the point of where I was 5 years ago.

I plan to keep a log here and continue to learn in public. I’ll be tracking the progress this Github repo.

🗓️ Dates Covered:

• 2025-04-21 - 2025-04-28

📚 What I Studied

• Chapter(s) covered: 5
• Concepts I focused on: Dictionaries!
• Challenges or problems attempted:
  • Chess Board validator at the end of Chapter 5
  • Worked with ChatGPT to come up with Leetcode style problems to test my logic, such as:
    • Counting and organizing a list of spells based on their category
    • Creating a multiplayer Tic-Tac-Toe game
    • Building a Spellbook when given a list of spells and their categories

🧠 What I Learned

• Key takeaways:
  • Using setdefault is a great way to keep track of unique values in a dictionary
  • Writing out the problem and solution in plain English sentences is a good way to fully understand and break down the problem.
  • Using dict.get(key, 0) is a safe way to prevent Python from throwing an error if the key is not present
  • Looping through nested dictionaries

🔁 Repeated Patterns or Skills Practiced

• Looping through dictionaries with key, value iterators in loops
• The importance of defensive coding while using dict.get() instead of directly accessing the key-value through dict[key]

⚔️ Challenges I Faced

• Problem(s) that tripped me up:

  • Breaking down the chessboard validator into smaller functions
  • Looping through nested dictionaries caused some initial confusion, but printing and debugging clarified where I was at in a given loop(s)

• What I misunderstood at first:

  • Looping through nested dictionaries can be confusing if trying to work out the values in sub-loops in my head

• How I solved or reframed it:

  • Write down a quick paragraph of how I’m going to solve it in English, then convert that to pseudo code before jumping into Python

✅ Wins of the Week

• Starting to get a good strategy of how I break down and decompose problems: writing. I have always been a strong writer and I can use that to my advantage to think through logical steps in breaking down a challenge.

🔮 What’s Next

• Topics I plan to tackle next week:
  • Chapter 6 and continuing to nail down the logic problems
• Goals for the next 7 days:
  • Work on 2 logic problems per day
• Questions or curiosities I want to explore:
  • How do I know when I can move on to true Leetcode style problems?

🧾 Favorite Snippet of the Week

def pretty_print_spells(spells):
    pretty_spells = ""
    for category in spells:
      if(category == 'fire'):
          emoji = '🔥'
      elif (category == 'healing'):
          emoji = '❤️'
      else:
          emoji = '💫'
      pretty_spells += f"{emoji} {category.capitalize()}: \n"
      for spell, k in spells[category].items():
          pretty_spells += f"- {spell.capitalize()}: {k} \n"
    print(pretty_spells)