If you’re up for a little challenge and would like to take your programming skills to the next level, then you’ve come to the right place! In this hands-on video course, you’ll practice object-oriented programming, among several other good practices, while building a cool maze solver project in Python.
You’ll go step by step through the guided process of building a complete and working project. This will include reading a maze from a binary file, visualizing it using scalable vector graphics (SVG), and finding the shortest path from the entrance to the exit.
In this video course, you’ll learn how to:
- Use an object-oriented approach to represent the maze in memory
- Visualize the maze and its solution using scalable vector graphics (SVG)
- Define a specialized binary file format to store the maze on disk
- Transform the maze into a traversable weighted graph
- Use a graph search algorithm in the NetworkX library to find the solution
This is an involved project that will really boost your skills as a Python programmer, and in the end, you won’t have to worry about getting lost in a maze.
You’ll need to use Python 3.10 or later. Also, it might be worth brushing up on the following topics before you dive in:
- Assignment expressions
- Bitwise operators
- Class methods
- Data classes
- Enum
typing.NamedTuple
- Structural pattern matching
- Type hints
You don’t need to be an expert in any of these areas to follow along with the video course, as it’ll guide you through the steps involved. In fact, a key aspect of your learning experience will be seeing these features in a practical context.
Note that all the code you’ll see running in the REPL will be using the bpython interpreter, but the code will also work in the standard REPL.