I Learned Python in a Weekend

Coding is the modern wizardry. I wanted to see if a complete muggle (me) could cast a spell (make a game) in 48 hours.

Goal: Recreate the Nokia classic "Snake" using Python.

Tools: Python 3, Pygame, VS Code, ChatGPT (for debugging).

Saturday Morning: The Setup Hell

The hardest part of coding isn't the code. It's the setup.

"Pip is not recognized as an internal or external command."

I spent 4 hours just trying to get `pygame` to install. I felt like throwing my laptop. Welcome to engineering.

Saturday Evening: The Moving Box

I finally got a black window to open. I drew a white square.

When I made the square move when I pressed 'Right', I felt a surge of god-like power. I control the pixels!

Sunday: The Logic

Snake is deceptively hard. You have to:

• Track the snake's body (a list of coordinates).
• Move the tail to where the head was.
• Detect collision with the wall (Death).
• Detect collision with food (Growth).

The Bug: For 3 hours, my snake kept growing infinitely without eating food. It was terrifying. The Infinite Snake.

The Result

It works. It's ugly, it crashes if you press two buttons at once, but it works.

Conclusion

Coding is 10% writing cool logic and 90% Googling "Why is my variable undefined". But seeing that snake move because I told it to was the most satisfying creative experience I've had in years.