So … I’ve started working on my little project that inspired the Ontology + Taxonomy for Boardgames thread:
- download my collection via the BGG API
- download the game data for my collection via the BGG API
- store everything in a local database
- the goal being to begin adding to the data I get from BGG in a way that allows me to analyze my games better
- if it turns out to be useful, I’ll make it available. For now I am just dabbling.
Because of the project I did recently at work I decided I wanted to use python and mongodb. I have not previously worked with any of the NoSQL variants. All the work I did as a java dev in the last 20+ years included relational databases.
And it’s a little crazy-ish what has been appearing in my IDE. (Note: a while ago I treated myself to a license for the all-in-edition of IntelliJ including their AI assistant, the J being just a name at this point, it’s a polyglot IDE now).
The AI assistant’s auto-complete for python is scary good for (some simple boilerplatish) tasks. Because a) the word ‘simple’ and b) python is probably the most common language in the web and extremely well documented. But still… it’s even more impressive than a year ago. (from other recent experiments: it also knows math far better than it did a year ago. )
To start I just told the chat that I want to talk to the API that lives at: https://boardgamegeek.com/xmlapi2/
I expected to get some simple rest client code or a web request thing… instead it gave me that and all the parameters needed for the API in question while telling me to test this for ID 13, letting me know 13 is Catan. It’s probably from some documentation of the API that I haven’t been able to find (I haven’t looked very hard). I know it is just auto-complete but still…
And then I am starting to do stuff like “I want to store this in the mongodb” and it gives me the store method. And a day later I decided I needed to also retrieve data of course and it autocompletes this from just the method name “get_game…”, I know it is just 4 lines of code that I don’t have to write… but multiply that and it starts being a real timesaver especially because I don’t have to leave my IDE to search for stuff on stackoverflow anymore.
I want to add this is all just code snippets. It can’t write software, just code. And it is very interactive. And someone without the necessary coding/software skills still wouldn’t be able to write anything with it. But I barely know python and I can write code now with a speed that I am beginning to think, if the next work project includes python, I can do it.
I am rambling but … mind blown.