Blind Date in Code

Bob: They told me about this experiment. I'll learn who you are only from the first comment you leave. Hello unknown.

Alice: Hi Bob. I don't think we know each other. I'm in the New Zealand office, Auckland to be precise.

Bob: That's quite a timezone difference. I'm on the other side of the Earth, I just checked.

Alice: Bom dia in Lisbon! Correct? Time passes and we haven't written a single line of code. I start

def main():
    pass

Bob: Let's make it a console app

import argparse

def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="TBD")
    args = parser.parse_args()

Alice: TBD? Come on.

-    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="TBD")
+    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Think of a number. I'll find it out")

Bob: I'm not sure

    args = parser.parse_args()
+   print(guess_number(args))

def guess_number(args):
    return 42

Alice: I just checked //xkcd.com/42/ Presumably not the reason you chose this number. How about this?

import os


def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Think of a number and I'll find it out")
    parser.add_argument("number", nargs="?", type=int, help="Your number if I didn't find it out")
    args = parser.parse_args()
    guess_number(args.number)


def guess_number(number):
  if number is None:
      print(42)
  else:
      clear_screen()
      print("Just what I said: {}".format(number))


def clear_screen():
    if os.name == "nt":
        os.system("cls")
    else:
        os.system("clear")

Bob: How about the usual boilerplate?

import argparse

...

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Alice: Mission completed. We’ve written a program together communicating only in code.