Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Preview
Start a free Courses trial
to watch this video
Let's get things figured out!
Learn more
- If you are looking to learn more about input, output, and variables, we cover that in the course Python Basics. See you there!
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
[MUSIC]
0:00
Well hello there, Craig here.
0:09
How's it going?
0:11
In this workshop, we're gonna practice
using some of those python muscles that
0:12
you've been building up.
0:16
When you're just getting
started with the language,
0:18
sometimes it's hard to find a way to apply
the skills that you've been learning.
0:19
It's hard to see how the pieces that
you've been picking up all snap together
0:24
to form a program.
0:27
Now I'm going to assume for this practice
session, that you know how to use
0:28
variables, take input from a user and
output things to the screen.
0:32
If you don't,
please check the teacher's notes for
0:36
where you can learn those things.
0:39
Believe it or not, but
with just those skills, input, output, and
0:41
variables, you can write
a pretty fun game.
0:45
Now, I'm not sure if you've
done one of these before, but
0:48
Mad Libs has been declared
the world's best word game.
0:53
The way it works is this.
0:57
There's two players, and
one player has a page like this.
0:59
And see how it has blanks that are labeled
with different parts of speech like
1:02
a noun, an adjective, or a verb?
1:05
The first player prompts
the second player for
1:07
words that match those parts of speech and
fills in the blanks with their answers.
1:10
Then the first player reads
the results aloud and hilarity ensues.
1:14
So we're gonna do it.
1:19
We're gonna build MadLibs in Python.
1:20
So let's go back to the workspace.
1:23
Go ahead and launch this and you will see
here I have a file called madlibs.py.
1:24
So I'm gonna open that up.
1:28
And you'll notice here that
I've made a template for us.
1:31
Something that you might not have
encountered yet are these pound signs or
1:35
hashtags, as the kids
are calling them these days.
1:39
What this does is this is a comment, and
1:42
this tells Python to ignore all of
the characters on the line and after it.
1:44
So what we can do is we can use this
to write English, just like I did here.
1:48
It's a way to be able to communicate
to readers of your code.
1:54
You'll end up leaning on these
quite a bit in the future.
1:59
Comments can also be used to make note
of things that you'd like to do later,
2:02
sort of like a to do list.
2:06
And typically the way that you do it,
2:08
kinda the format that's come
about is this to do, in all caps.
2:09
TODO colon and then what it is.
2:13
It's kinda like a standard.
2:15
So I've left some to do's for you to do.
2:18
But first off, I'd like you to prompt
the user for the various parts of speech,
2:22
like the verb and
the noun and the adjective.
2:27
And then store each of
the responses in a variable.
2:32
And then the second to do,
I would like you to output
2:35
that template with the words
that the user just filled out.
2:40
Got it?
2:44
Don't worry, you got this.
2:45
You have all the skills that you need to
achieve this, and it's totally fine for
2:47
this to be a bit of a struggle.
2:52
It's kinda like no pain no gain,
but for your brain.
2:53
So in the next video I'll
show you how I did it.
2:57
In fact, you know what?
3:00
I've already done the practice, so
3:02
let me show you what my final product
looks like so you can try to recreate it.
3:04
So here, I'm gonna jump over to mine.
3:07
I'm not going to show you my code,
nice try.
3:09
So say python and
the name of that program is madlibs.py.
3:12
So this is what it looks
like when it runs.
3:15
So it says, please enter a verb.
3:17
Now remember I don't know
what that template is.
3:18
So dance, I don't know.
3:20
Enter a noun, let's see, dinosaur.
3:23
That's a good noun.
3:25
And an adjective.
3:27
How about wacky?
3:28
I enjoy practice, I find it helps
me to dance better, I wish.
3:30
Without practice,
my dinosaur probably wouldn't even work.
3:34
My codes gonna get more
wacky every single day.
3:36
See, fun, right.
3:39
All right, so you can do this, right?
3:41
And again, don't beat yourself
up if you can't quite get it,
3:43
I want you to really give it a try.
3:46
And remember, I'll show you how
I did it in the next video, but
3:48
don't skip ahead, give it a go, you ready?
3:50
You got this.
3:53
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up