this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy
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Since we live in the digital age, I think it would be awesome if everyone knew a little bit of python and how you can automate boring tasks using it. Well doesn't have to only be python but it would be cool if something like it was added to school systems
I know a little python but have no idea how I would use it to automate anything useful. Any suggestions? What do you do with it?
Look up Automate boring stuff with python
Not being sarcastic
To expand on this, it's a book/ebook with that title "Automate The Boring Stuff With Python."
Also a course on udemy now, iirc
Good question. I am now a software developer, but in a previous career I was a logistics manager. In that job I had a lot of repetitive report downloading and creating. It would take hours each day. I used techniques taught in that book to automate downloading reports directly, as well as generating some in SAP by automating mouse and keyboard movements, as well as generating CSVs and Excel spreadsheets. In all cases I either cut the time required or at least the time I had to be physically present. Many jobs could have similar applications of a little Python, I imagine. Certainly not all jobs though, of course.
I use Bash rather than Python for this, but I have scripts for doing things like converting a .docx to a .pdf file. Sure you can open MS Word, wait for it to load, navigate the menus, maybe have to know that some software still handles this via the Print dialog for some reason, that you "print to PDF,"...or write a little script that does the job, put it in a certain folder along with a little ~6 line config file, and now you can right click a file and click "convert to PDF" and it just does it without opening any apps.
I have occasional need to do things to image files, like rotate a batch of them, or convert them to gray scale. Once again I have bash scripts that call imagemagick for this, but it can be done in Python using the Python Image Library (PIL).
I use a Python-based autokeyer, I have a bunch of abbreviations or whatnot that I can type, like (asterisk)wtl becomes Welcome to the Linux community! because I used to type that so often when I was active in r/linuxmasterrace. That one is just a simple find-and-replace that takes no coding, but I have some that insert the correct date, that look up information from files on the fly and insert it...if you write business emails, you really should have an autokeyer.