You know when you&#ve been Wordled...

Do you ever start out on a project thinking "How hard could it be?" - only to find out months later that the answer is "Way harder, definitely out of my depth for now." Well that just about sums up this project I've been working on for a while. Here's the story.

I've been interested in computers for years. I built my first PC when I was in my teens, back in 2008, and at that time software seemed to be some sort of mysterious sorcery that I couldn't wrap my head around. Fast forward to about a year ago, and I found myself signing up for Codecademy. It was partly to try and learn a new skill, should I decide or need to switch jobs in the future. However, mostly it was just for fun and personal satisfaction - maybe I could finally understand a little more about how that mysterious software worked?

My first stop was the free C# course, which got me intrigued enough to sign up for an annual subscription. A few months later, I decided to go for a big one and start the Computer Science Career Path. Although I could have gone for something like web development, I figured Computer Science was more in line with my original interests when I first got into computers - not just learning how to code, but how it all works under the hood.

The course started by teaching me a new language - Python. I had heard that this language is one of the most popular ones for beginners, and I could see why. Having previously dabbled with C#, which seemed easy enough but with some strange quirks that went over my head, I took to Python like a duck to water.

However, it then came to the part of the course where I needed to make my first Portfolio Project. The brief was to create a terminal game in Python, and to publish it on GitHub and a blogging platform. Well initially, the part of the assignment that made me bristle was sharing my project with others. I tend to shy away from publishing things out in the open, especially when I don't feel like I properly know what I'm doing. A past failed career as a Cartoonist taught me the dangers of "blagging" - giving the impression that I was more competent and perhaps more experienced than I actually was in order to potentially win clients. However, that's another story.

Basically, the condensed version of this long preamble is that I'm writing this post because Codecademy made me do it. I'm not under any illusions/delusions that I'm an amazing coder - I'm just a curious nerd who would like to make it to the end of this course and learn some cool things along the way. And you know what, I'm happy with that, and if you're in the same boat as me, you should be too.

So what about the game that I was to create? I had a few starting suggestions from Codecademy, such as Blackjack, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Minesweeper, but I wanted to try something different. A game that I enjoy playing every day is "Wordle", now owned and hosted by the New York Times. Apparently that game started as a little personal project that a guy made for his girlfriend, and I was intrigued by the seeming simplicity of the game rules and how it seemed to work. So I set about creating my own version of "Wordle", to see if I could figure it out for myself. After all, how hard could it be?...

The short answer - a fair bit harder than I thought, considering that I'm merely a beginner. I'm sure an expert could bash out a Wordle clone in a few hours, but for me this has been a months-long project. I mostly worked on it in the evenings before going to bed, and it has been a very enjoyable experience. It has surprised me how many moving parts there are in a seemingly simple terminal game.

You can find my code on GitHub here.

The project is still a work in progress, and I intend to continue fixing bugs and adding features as time goes on. In a nutshell though, here is how the game works:

Upon launch, the user is shown a splash screen and asked to input their name. Next, the game picks a secret word in the background, currently from a test list of ten 6-letter words. In a later version, I plan to extend this list so that many more possible words are available. The program then displays a keyboard and a grid of the current guesses. Only 6-letter guesses are accepted, with only alphanumeric characters. Each time a guess is submitted, the program analyses the guess and compares it with the secret word. If the player has selected a correct letter in the right place, it is printed in green and the relevant letter turns green on the keyboard. If the letter is correct but misplaced, it is printed yellow. If a letter is incorrect, it is printed in grey. This process closely mimics the logic of the original game, although I've discovered a few edge case bugs that can cause it to crash. If the player guesses the word correctly within six attempts, they win. If they take more than six attempts, the game ends in failure.

So it sounds simple, but it actually took me a couple of months to get to this stage. I was surprised by how complicated my code became, and at a later date I plan to simplify it if possible. At the same time, it was a genuinely enjoyable challenge for me, and I'm happy that I was able to get it this far. I want to continue with the course now, but I fully intend to circle back to it regularly to make some updates. If you have any suggestions to the code or possible new features, please let me know.

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