If You Teach Your Pa Some Python
(A Cautionary Tale)

If you teach your Pa some python
He will get excited
And want to start "a project"
He will wander around the house
Saying "hmmm"
(thinking of an idea)
And before you know it
He will be writing a "text adventure"
(Which is a strange old game with only words)
Then he will get very enthusiastic
And declare that he needs an IDE
(Because someone on YouTube has one)
Then there will be typing
And more typing
And more typing

Next it will get a bit tricky
And he will wander around the house
Saying "hmmm"
(thinking about dictionaries of dictionaries)
Eventually he will want you to try his game
And will be very proud to have created
One door and one key
But there won't actually be a room
Behind the door
Which won't be very interesting
So then there will be typing
And more typing
And more typing

Then one day
There will be some unfortunate language in the house
And he will declare that he needs "version control"
(Which means "Git")
And he will wander around the house
Saying "hmmm"
(thinking about Git clients and respositores)
Then he will proudly tell you
That his code is on "GitHub"
And he will go back to typing
And more typing
And more typing

Eventually
After more "hmmm"s
And much more typing
the game will be "mostly done"
He will be very proud of it
And want the whole family to play it
To give him "feedback"
(but only Mommy
will actually play the whole thing..
and she'll help him with his spelling too)

So then
He'll want to show it to all his friends
He will declare that he is "just going to put it on the web"
Which will mean
Learning Flask and Jinja2
And I'm sorry to say
There will thne be more unfortunate language in the house
Because client-side programming is "strange and unnatural"
But eventually
After quite a bit of typing
(And delting)
And some wandering around the house
Saying "hmmm"
And more typing
(And more deleting)
And a last bit of typing

There will be "much rejoicing"
And the game will be running
On the local web server
He will declare "now I just need to spruce it up a bit"
Which will mean "CSS"
And more YouTube classes
And also "Exercising aesthetic judgment"
Then there will be
More wandering about the house
Saying "hmmm"
Then it will be time again for typing
And more typing
And a bit of photo editing

Finally
He will be ready to put the game on the "real" web
Which wil mean a "Pythonanywhere"
Which will seem great at first
Until it becomes clear that this means
Bash shell and vi
Then there will be more unforutunate language in the house
And also long stories
About the last time he used vi
30 years ago
But after a bit more typing
and a few more "hmmm"s

At last
The game will be up on the "real" web
He will send everyone he knows a link to it
Then just when the "project"
Is finally finished
he will declare that he needs to do it all over again "right"
Which will mean "object oriented code with a NoSQL DB"
(This is why this is a cautionary tale)

- Tom