Tutorial | Python | dotenv

In a previous post, I left a Discord token in the script. This is not the ideal way to code, especially if I don’t want to regenerate my tokens every time I share code. Using credentials and API tokens in your data science and programming projects is inevitable, but leaving them exposed is avoidable. Using the dotenv python module can help keep these sensitive bits of information safe from prying eyes.

In a previous post I went through the steps to create a Discord bot using Discord.py in python. …

During tough times, it is important to find inspiration wherever you can. We can all agree that 2020 has been an especially tough year, whether it was from graduating but being unable to find a job, losing a job due to side effects of the global pandemic, getting sick, or knowing someone who was affected by one of these situations. As one of the worst years most of us can remember, where can we find inspiration to be better?

Well, inspiration is anywhere you look for it. It doesn’t have to come from real people, it doesn’t have to come from people who have accomplished anything too radical. You just need to look at what people are doing, pick apart why it works, and take away some sort of lesson. …

Being stuck at home for the better part of a year has taken its toll. Normally we can escape the physical confines of work by going home. With many of us conducting business from our homes, that just isn’t the case anymore. This, combined with having trouble getting your code to run or not finding anything significant in your analysis can be draining.

You start to feel bad about not accomplishing anything. You start to doubt your skills and whether you are really getting anything done. It would be so easy to just sit back down and keep working at it until it’s done. …

My first job ever was in fast food, and it taught me a lot of things. There was a certain mentality that could be summed up by the phrase, “if you’re leaning you could be cleaning.” In a nutshell, there wasn’t meant to be any downtime. If there were no customers, there was always an unlimited supply of more work to do.

This constant nose to the grindstone philosophy really grinds away at your will to work. The ask is that you give your all for the company and work as hard as you possibly can constantly until it is time to go home. In that environment, sometimes that is how things need to be. …

Tutorial | Python | Discord.py

Looking for that extra flair for your Discord bot responses? Making fonts bold, italic, strikethrough, and other options will give you more control over how responses look. You can draw attention to certain parts of messages, hide other parts, and generally improve the look and feel of your bot’s messages.

Previously we added some flair to our messages by using embeds to organize information sent by the bot. Now we will use the Discord markdown options to spice things up. You may have already used this to format text in the Discord app. You can see some of the options explained on Discord’s website here. …

Bad news for anyone graduating this December looking for a job in Data Science. Unemployment is still nearly 2% higher than it was in 2019. So many people are still…

Tutorial | Python | Discord.py

When your Discord bot responds to your server, you don’t always want a boring default message to be sent back. Maybe you have links or images that you want to send back in chat. With Python and Discord.py, this is super easy to do in your Discord bot!

Note: This is tested on version 1.4.1 of the Discord.py module. You will encounter issues if you are using a version lower than 1.0. It is recommended that you migrate your code to a more current version.

Building Embeds

Embeds in Discord are simple and have a very clean, formatted look to them. In this tutorial we will go through how to create an embed and customize every part of it. …

Tutorial | Python | Discord.py

So you have a Discord bot written in Discord.py and you are ready to test it or add the finished bot to your server. Looking at the Discord.py GitHub page, none of the examples have any code that adds them to the server, so how do you do it? Don’t worry, it doesn’t take any code, and is super easy to do!

Don’t have a Discord.py bot written yet? Check out my tutorial to get started with a simple bot!

Create a Discord Application

Open up the Discord Developer Portal in your browser. …