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Welcome to this week’s Sloth Bytes. I hope you had a great week.
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Sloths don't actually lose their teeth
Gif by CoopPrix on Giphy
Sloths don’t have to worry about losing teeth as easily as humans because they are what are known as “hypsodonts”, which means their teeth grow continuously throughout their lives.
Python Automation
Ever find yourself stuck doing the same tasks over and over again?
Copying files, renaming documents, sorting data.
It's tedious and time-consuming.
What if you could make your computer do it for you?
Imagine this:
Your emails get sorted automatically.
Reports generate themselves.
Data organizes without you lifting a finger.
Sound like magic?
It's not. It's Python automation.
Why Python?
Because it's simple, easy to read, and incredibly powerful. Python allows you to automate tasks, freeing up your time for more important things.
Getting Started is Easy
Install Python
Head over to python.org and download it.
Learn the Basics
Familiarize yourself with variables, loops, and functions—just the essentials.
Pick a Task
Choose something repetitive and boring. Let's automate it.
A Quick Example
Ever needed to rename a bunch of files, like changing image001.png to vacation001.png? Doing this by hand is tedious and prone to errors.
With Python, you can automate it:
from pathlib import Path
folder = Path("photos")
# Dry run first: show exactly what would change.
for path in folder.glob("image*.png"):
suffix = path.name.removeprefix("image")
destination = path.with_name(f"vacation{suffix}")
if destination.exists():
print(f"SKIP: {destination.name} already exists")
continue
print(f"RENAME: {path.name} -> {destination.name}")
# Once the output looks correct, replace the print above with:
# path.rename(destination)The important part is not just “Python can rename files.” It’s that you can preview the exact changes first, constrain the script to the files you intended, and avoid silently overwriting an existing destination.
Automation Needs Guardrails
A manual mistake might break one file. An automated mistake can break 40,000 files before your coffee finishes brewing.
Dry-run destructive operations. Print/log planned renames, deletes, emails, database changes, or API calls before enabling the real action.
Make jobs idempotent when possible. Running the same automation twice should not create duplicate emails, double-charge a customer, or rename
vacation001.pngintovacationvacation001.png.Handle partial failures. Network calls need timeouts and carefully designed retries. Retrying a read is different from retrying a payment or other side effect.
Keep secrets out of the script. API keys, SMTP passwords, and tokens belong in environment/configuration or a secret manager—not pasted into source code.
Log what happened. Scheduled automation that fails silently is just procrastination with a cron expression.
Back up important data. Especially before your first bulk-delete, move, or transformation.
What Else Can You Automate?
Web/data collection: Fetch information from APIs or websites where automation is permitted. Respect authentication, rate limits, privacy requirements, and site policies.
Email/workflow automation: Generate notifications or reports through an email/API provider without hardcoding credentials.
Data processing: Validate, transform, reconcile, and export repetitive datasets.
Reporting: Generate scheduled reports from databases/APIs and alert when the job fails.
File operations: Rename, organize, compress, copy, or back up files with collision checks and dry runs.
Tools to Help You
Python standard library:
pathlib,csv,json,shutil,subprocess,smtplib, and friends cover a surprising amount without extra dependencies.Requests / HTTP clients: Work with APIs; always add explicit timeouts and handle failures.
Pandas: Useful for tabular data transformations and reports.
Beautiful Soup: Parse HTML when scraping is appropriate and allowed.
Playwright/Selenium: Browser automation when an API or simpler HTTP workflow is not available.
But I'm Not a Programmer
No worries. Python is beginner-friendly, and there are plenty of resources to help you start.
Why Automate?
Automation can save time and make repeatable work more consistent—but it also scales mistakes. The goal is not “remove the human at all costs.” It’s to automate the boring, well-defined steps while keeping validation, observability, and approvals around risky actions.
More Ideas
Back up a folder and verify the backup completed.
Organize photos into folders using metadata.
Generate a daily report from an API and alert if the request fails.
Validate CSV files before importing them into a database.
Rename batches of files with a dry-run mode.
So basically… Stay lazy. Stay efficient. Automate with Python.
If you want to keep learning
Cron jobs explained — schedule Python scripts to run automatically instead of launching them by hand like some kind of caveman.
Command Line for beginners — learn the terminal basics you’ll use to run scripts, work with files, and automate workflows.
How to start a programming project — turn a repetitive annoyance into a small automation project you can actually finish.
Thank you to everyone who submitted 😃
There was so many submissions this time… sorry if you’re not listed here (I still love you)
Classy-Cassy, ravener, JamesHarryT, Yoshlix, RelyingEarth87, HingedGuide, Harutoedv504, duna-akin, ddat828, taypham88, and whole lot of other solutions in the comments of the last newsletter: https://slothbytes.beehiiv.com/p/open-source
Alright last week’s challenge was easy, so time to step it up a little.
pigLatin
Write a function that converts a sentence into pig latin.
Rules for converting to pig latin:
For words that begin with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), add "way".
Otherwise, move all letters before the first vowel to the end and add "ay".
For simplicity, no punctuation will be present in the inputs.
Examples
#Example 1
pigLatinSentence("this is pig latin")
output = "isthay isway igpay atinlay"
#Example 2
pigLatinSentence("wall street journal")
output = "allway eetstray ournaljay"Notes
All letters will be in lowercase.
How To Submit Answers
Reply with
A link to your solution (github, twitter, personal blog, portfolio, replit, etc)
or if you’re on the web version leave a comment!
Alright buddy where’s the new video
uhhhh I’m still editing it… EDITING IS HARD. I’m also trying to refine the script to make it informative and entertaining. It’s pretty hard to do that for some of these topics I won’t lie, but I’m doing my best.
That’s all from me!
Have a great week, be safe, make good choices, and have fun coding.
See you all next week.
