Thanks @HanonO (again!)
It’s tough but good to admit that! Certainly when someone told me about it and how it was super powerful and the Wave of the Future, etc. it sort of intimidated me. Ironically, it was my fear of Twine that kept me doing this in Python, which people might overall fear more. I could’ve learned Twine and waited a year to submit the game, but it just wasn’t big enough, and I wanted it done!
The below doesn’t quite seem to fit in this thread, because it’s more general advice, but I suspect it will be useful to someone, somewhere, as a thought experiment.
thoughts on Python programming and installing other runtime libraries
I liked Perl, but I was told Python was better. “It’s more powerful!” But that intimidated me.
Then I realized … Perl was good, but Python let you do a lot more things without having to type technical stuff, and many of my 200 line Perl scripts would be 100 line Python scripts, and a lot more readable, too. It was easier to install and include modules. You could take shortcuts that, back in 1990, people would call you lazy for wanting. The functions were in plain English. If you said “Hmm, it’d be nice if someone wrote (extension X)…” they probably did.
So once I got over the fear of Python I was able to do a lot with it. And even if I don’t program in a language, but I need to download the software that runs it, I can say “I’ve installed and uninstalled enough apps over the years, I can expect the big ones to have solid user-friendliness. The bare minimums for supporting the user have gone up over the years. That’s tough to remember, because we’re told computers keep developing and getting more complex. But so does the knowledge-base of what makes software easier for the end-user and programmer.”
These 2 thoughts give me confidence a new package should run smoothly, too:
- companies need to make it easier to install main packages and also modules, or users/programmers would switch to another programming language/framework.
- you can even Google your exact error message, even if it sounds weird, and the answer to your question or one like it will be there. Someone’s been there before you!
Maybe this will help people feel more at ease with the next package they need to install. Each one feels like a leap of faith, at first.
Note that any bugs after running wii.py are reportable. I suspect anyone installing Python now will have the latest version, but I still want to check them out.