Reasons to Code

There are many online marketing tools out there. But sometimes it is beneficial to make your own. Below are some good reason you should consider coding your own.

• Time saver
  • If the task is repetitive, save valuable time by creating a program to automate the task.
• Unique Method
  • If the things you want to do are unqiue and there is available software, you can code it yourself.
• Faster
  • Sometimes an auto clicker just won’t be enough. Some tasks are too compicated and slow for auto-clickers.
• Multi-platform
  • Don’t just be limited by windows. Code it once and run on all platforms such as Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.
• Efficient
  • Using bots that control the web browser are slow and utilize a lot of resources. Python is fast, lightweight, multi-threadable, and socket level.
• Used by the big guys
  • Huge companies like ¹Google and Yahoo, 3D modeling programs like Blender 3D, and games like Battlefield 2 use Python in the back end. They know the usefullness of Python; it is a good skill to have under the belt.

Benefits of Python

Most of my tutorial will use Python because it is powerful, easy to read and learn, and fast.

• Free
  • Freely available. Open source.
• Can run on anything
  • Windows, Mac OS, Linux, you name it.
• Simple to read/write
  • Python was designed to be easy to learn and read. Best explained with examples. I bet you will understand what the code is doing, even if you are new to Python. Because of the simplicity of Python anyone can pick it up fast and start coding.

Tumblr Examples

With just two lines of code you can follow and unfollow a blog.

client.follow('codingjester.tumblr.com') # follow a tumblr blog
client.unfollow('codingjester.tumblr.com') # unfollow a tumblr blog

Create a photo post with tags and image.jpg

#Creates a photo post using a local filepath
client.create_photo('codingjester', state="queue", tags=["testing", "ok"], data="/path/to/my/image.jpg")

Instagram Examples

Searching

#Search for a instagram username 'mikeyk'
self.api.user_search('mikeyk', 10)
#Search for pictures with tag 'dogs'
self.api.tag_search("dogs")

Following and unfollowing

self.api.follow_user(user_id='10')
self.api.unfollow_user(user_id='10')

As you can see, many of the tasks are quite simple to code. There are modules built for services like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Vine, YouTube, and Tumblr.

• Short development process
  • Python comes pre-packed with many features. Many parts of Python were designed so you type less without losing any functionalty. Reading a list from a file might take a couple hundred lines of code in C or Java, but Python can do it in 2 lines or less. Therefore you spend less coding and the development cycle is much shorter.
• A lot of modules
  • The Python community is large. Many of the hard work and coding has already been done. You can just download the code and reuse. So development process is extreamely fast.