Ontario UniFinder

A simple Python text-based university searcher, made by people with less than 24 hrs of total Python experience

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Inspiration

We were inspired to pursue this project when we realized the difficulties in browsing for university information that is available to users. We were then motivated to create a Python program that could overcome this difficulty. Starting small, we decided we would begin with providing information about four universities in Ontario: two universities specializing in the field of engineering and two universities specializing in the field of business. This is the problem that inspired and motivated us to build and create this project.

What it does

The Ontario UniFinder, the Python program we built, is programmed to interact with the user and help provide the user with information on universities based on the interests of the user. Using a text interface, the user inputs their information, such as the field of research they want to go into in university and their academic scores, and the program recommends them universities that they would be eligible to apply to. The program also provides information about the universities themselves, such as food and boarding costs, and a short history of the school.

How we built it

We built this program with Python 3.6.4. Using what we learned from the Introduction to Python class at Hack the Hammer and the help we obtained from mentors and fellow hackers, we applied our Python knowledge and built a program that could be both user-friendly and provide university information to a user. We used external sources to learn additional Python codes and how to fix Python programs. Thus, the entire program is built completely around the simplest of Python concepts.

Challenges we ran into

There were several challenges we ran into along the process of building our Python program. Such challenges included being able to input information for more than one university, describing the flow of information to the user to make sure they knew what was going on, (especially since text-only interfaces can be very confusing) organizing information and giving as many options as we could for the user so they would be in control, and finding out how to link each piece of information about the universities to each other. We learned that we had to write different code for each university as the information for each university varied and could not be described with the same code. Another challenge we faced during our project was obtaining the knowledge needed for programming and building our program. We had to rely on external resources and help from our mentors and peers for obtaining this information. Neither of us had ever done Python before, or really any coding at all, so we went into this nearly blind. The bulk of our knowledge for this project came purely from the Intro to Python course offered here at Hack the Hammer, meaning this program was created by 2 programmers with less than 24 hours of Python knowledge, as well as plenty of help from mentors and peers. Nevertheless, we think we did pretty well for our first 24 hours with a program we'd never coded in before.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One major accomplishment that we're proud of was being able to build a Python program with the bare minimum Python knowledge. We are proud of ourselves that using only basic Python code, we were able to build a Python program that could provide a user with information. As this was one of our first times interacting with a coding language ever, we're pretty proud that we were able to do this in 24 hours, even though it's broken.

What we learned

During Hack the Hammer, we obtained a great amount of learning experience and and learned a lot about coding, coding languages and programs. During Hack the Hammer, we were introduced to Python, Tensorflow, GitHub, and several other programs and softwares we didn't know beforehand. We believe the learning knowledge we attained during this hackathon will be helpful in the future when participating in future hackathons or when working with coding.

What's next for Ontario UniFinder

Our future steps for Ontario UniFinder include building a graphical user interface (GUI) for our Python program so it's more easily accessible for users, instead of having it be text-based. Another future step for Ontario UniFinder is to expand the program and include more universities and more parameters and information.

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