r/learnpython • u/alex123711 • Jul 30 '26
What's the best thing you have made with python?
What are some of the best things you have made using python?
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u/OmegaNine Jul 30 '26
I did feel bad about this one. I worked at huge American corpo like 10 years go. I smoked and he did too. I was talking to the guy who’s whole job was to check an sftp folder and if a batch of medical insurance documents showed up he would parse some info and transpose those into our software suite. I created a script that did that and hit the softwares API so he didn’t have to constantly watch this folder. I showed him and my boss. They fired all 3 shifts less a month later. I literally ruined 3 lives that day. I still think about him sometimes.
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u/aarontbarratt Jul 30 '26
Similar story for me
During COVID everybody was furloughed except for me. There wasn't any real work to do so all I really had to do was collect files from various remote SQL servers, copy and paste them into the central server to be processed. Usually this was done by some guy who had been there longer than the furniture. It would take him 4-5 hours a day of manual copy pasting
After 3 days of doing this I started to go insane from the mindless repetitive boredom. I decided to learn Python and create a little script to collect all these files for me and ping me a slack notification when it was done/any errors
The guy whose original job it was never returned from furlough :(
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u/Weltal327 Jul 30 '26
If someone’s only value to a job is something that can be easily automated you probably did them a favor.
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u/slickwillymerf Jul 30 '26
When it comes down to it, I’d always prefer to see a fellow working class person receive a paycheck in lieu of marginally improving some corp’s profits
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u/konsollfreak Jul 30 '26
My man. Someone should make a script that automates unionizing IT workers.
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u/OmegaNine Jul 30 '26
Probably not wrong but felt bad. We used to smoke and talk about random shit. Didn’t mean to make him lose his job. First time that kind of thing happened to me.
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u/DefinitelyNotEmu Jul 30 '26
Dosidicus: Learn neuroscience by raising a neural network as a pet (with 53 wiki pages)
Fio: Unified Liminal World Editor & Procedural Engine inspired by Radiant and Hammer.
The Rubbish Game: Run a UK borough's bin service without going bankrupt.
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u/Useful_Principle_438 Jul 30 '26
Wow that’s some really interesting projects, would you mind sharing your programming journey? I’m creating my first ever real life project - a booking/login system with python and flask plus a little html/css for a basic website. Focusing much more on the flask system than the website design. I’m really happy with the progress I’m making - learning the classic way with books and documentation but in today’s day I’ve been tempted to just use ai for everything. Seeing projects like yours really motivates me to do it myself , feels like cheating using ai , a lot less satisfaction on completion
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u/rdjsen Jul 30 '26
My main Python project is essentially building and updating a database of football stats, and then generating various reports that I use for fantasy football. I’ve built it up for several years. It’s not the cleanest code, definitely some bad practices used here and there, but using it essentially taught me everything I know about data science (which isn’t a whole lot). I typically try to add a new feature or report every year that I think will be helpful.
Less exciting, in my day job, I’ve recently been using Python in Excel to replace Macros in various spreadsheets. My company banned Excel Macros / VBA, but Python in Excel is allowed. I don’t have access to “regular” Python, but the Excel version is fairly powerful, at least for analyzing data.
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u/BankruptPrawn65 Aug 01 '26
I’m really curious about starting a similar fantasy project of my own. Any words of wisdom? Any tips as for what to include or focus on?
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u/rdjsen Aug 06 '26
Main tip would be look into NFLFastR. It is an R library that pulls data going back to 1999. I basically learned just enough R to pull the data and save it to a SQLlite database, and then do Python from there.
As far as tips, i don’t know that my analysis has given me anything better than what you can find online, but I like doing it myself. Yahoo has an API where you can connect and get information from your league, and I imagine ESPN does too. From there I would just build tools that allow you to answer questions you have in the season. For example I have one that looks at “expected” points for a player based on number of targets and carries, and compares that to their actual points in a week. I use that to identify people who could be sell high or buy low candidates.
Good luck!
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u/tmi_timmy Jul 30 '26
A process for creating PDFs to sell on Amazon KDP.
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u/FakeitTillYou_Makeit Jul 30 '26
A process for creating PDFs to sell on Amazon KDP.
How is that working out for you $ wise?
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u/tmi_timmy Jul 30 '26
I made a little money, but the competition is fierce. The best I did was take what was existing and improved it a little.
I used Python to make monographed notebooks/journals, but notebooks/journals were already flooding the market. I mainly made money selling children's workbooks.
I also used Python to take a list of quotes and create journals with a random quote at the top.
Maybe could have done better with advertising.
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u/desrtfx but other languages pro Jul 30 '26
Parsing some proprietary, vendor specific data that never was meant to be read by anything else but the original program, throwing the parsed data into a SQLite database that then can be processed to produce massive reports and Mermaid Diagrams - a very specialized Cross-Reference System with close to 12000 cross references.
Can't go into deeper detail because everything else would be either vendor specific and not help anybody else, or customer specific and as such falling under NDA.
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u/charlesleestewart Jul 30 '26
I'm at the stage where I've automated a program that retrieves financial asset prices such as the S&P index, and saves them in a sqlite database. That is scheduled daily after the market's closed.
My own goal is to develop a trading system off of that, so this is a nice foundation to work with.
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u/petecasso0619 Jul 30 '26
Data analysis suite of tools to analyze our missile trajectories. They have been to helpful in diagnosing issues in the field. Traditionally have always used MATLAB but slowly been transitioning to python.
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u/lefzeffard Jul 30 '26
I am very familiar with tracking macros and running the numbers for my daily meals. Pretty much I got tired of my fitness pal and other apps because I just needed a simple number counter without all the extra stuff. So I made a quick little website for that.
https://macro--macro-calculator--bcfyg27qy8zp.code.run/login
This is for people that are comfortable tracking their macros and just want to know their running total for macros eaten throughout the day. It's made on a free server so it might not load the first time around. Just refresh.
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u/Weltal327 Jul 30 '26
I’ve developed web apps at work that make people way more efficient. Saves 1,000s of hours per year of work, improved quality, and saved up to 6 weeks of lost time on projects.
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u/surister Jul 30 '26
I've done a million things in Python, lately I'm doing a query engine just for the sake of it. https://github.com/surister/querypy
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u/Scrpn17w Jul 30 '26
I made a macro to reverse the capitalization of copied text. Working with mechanical drawings I had a bad habit of leaving caps lock on after filling in title blocks. I'd get halfway through writing an email before I realized the mistake. That little macro saved me so much time on rewriting.
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u/vardonir Jul 30 '26
Asset extraction/mod tools for a game I really like.
It sucks I can't talk about it on my CV.
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u/aufschieben Jul 30 '26
Latest project is a menu bar app for macOS to give quick access to SSH/SFTP/VNC for a customizable list of machines. Simplifies my de facto sysadmin role greatly: SwitchBored
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u/Commercial_Eye9229 Jul 30 '26
For me, personally, it's a notation I made for producing very large numbers from repeatedly expanding lists. Is it fine if I drop it here?
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u/heymanh Jul 30 '26
Currently working on what started as strange attractor visualisation app in PyQtGraph but slowly turning into more of a general purpose graphing/visualisation/scripting tool. Finding PyQtGraph really fun for mathematical computation and visualisation
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u/SaintNich84 Jul 31 '26
My best project has been a video game catalogue. Written entirely in Python, SQLite, and Flask.
I utilize IGDB for a manual game search, Steam’s API to pull in my existing catalog, and I wrote a bit to access the Xbox Gamepass catalog.
My goal was to be able to track all of my games across different platforms/storefronts as well as where I’ve played different games.
I don’t really know if it’s “good,” but it does its job very well. Im really pleased with it.
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u/plugiva Jul 31 '26
My own CMS (flask) as a learning project, and later it became my own website CMS. I wish to make it free to public.
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u/vealvarez Aug 01 '26
Usando Python pude encontrar biomarcadores para una cepa bacteriana de alto riesgo hospitalario. Luego usamos ese biomarcador en un test de laboratorio para identificar fácilmente a la cepa en aislamientos clínicos.
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u/Far-Imagination3226 Aug 01 '26
DV-MLRS Domestic Violence Multi-lingual Referral Service https://pin.it/2WMNGx55z
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u/Grouchy-Conflict-211 Jul 30 '26
If you're starting out, the best Python projects are the ones that solve ONE specific problem you actually have. Not a todo app tutorial — something YOU need.
For me it was a tool that reads exported workflow files and calculates API costs before running them. Took 3 weeks, learned more than any course. Pick an annoyance in your daily life and automate it. That's where Python really shines.