Python: a small translation exercise at work

Not long ago, I started programming in Python. I really wondered where developers' obsession with this language came from 🐍 — probably a venom you're born with 😁. In reality, what Python offers is a unique developer experience (DX), which I got a taste of.

At work, we had a problem: strings not translated into French. There are two language files holding all of an app's strings, structured as PHP associative arrays — at least 3000 lines each.

I wrote a script that reads each file's content and restructures it into tuples, sets and dictionaries in Python. Then I diff the two tuples (English and French) to get the list of keys present on the English side but missing on the French side. I store that list in a new file, “notTranslated.php”, ready to be translated via an API — 381 remaining lines.

This exercise taught me to read from files and manipulate sequences (strings, sets, tuples, lists) and dictionaries in Python. A rather fun little exercise. 🙌🏾