Just wow them 1 time!

If your life is even remotely similar to that of the average Nigerian teenager then you know your parents expect you to be a tech wunderkind or something of sorts even if that just means reconnecting the HDMI cord attached to the TV or helping to update apps on their mobile phones.

In this post, We will go over two basic requests you may come across and I will show you how you can tackle them.

Request 1: Your Nigerian Dad sees you on your computer, comments on how you’re not doing actual work. As usual, you say that you are but he asks you to teach him how to write a “basic code” to convince him of your “work”.

To wow him, we’ll create a guessing game with python. We’ll need to have: Python installed, and if you’re feeling fancy, an IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

This script will be an interactive guessing game that’ll let the user guess what number the computer is thinking of between 1 to 99.

To start, we’ll have to find a way to make the computer guess random numbers each time the code is run. To do that we’ll import the random module and store the number the computer picks in a variable, n.

import random
n = random.randint(1, 99)

Intuitively, our next step would be to allow the user(your Dad) guess what number the computer has selected and verify to see if his guess is correct. If the guess is correct, we should return a congratulatory message else we should tell him if his guess is too high or too low and allow him to keep trying.

guess = int(input(“Enter an integer from 1 to 99: “))
while n != “guess”:
print
if guess < n:
print (“guess is low”)
guess = int(input(“Enter an integer from 1 to 99: “))
elif guess > n:
print (“guess is high”)
guess = int(input(“Enter an integer from 1 to 99: “))
else:
print (“you guessed it!”)
break

Request 2: Your parents ask for your help with sending a birthday message to a relative you haven’t spoken to in years. They want something simple but different.

Ahah, the more common request from the tech noobs. The first step would be to identify how they plan to contact said relative, be it email, Whatsapp, Facebook etc.

Second step would be to make an online e Card and give them the chance to give input as to what the card should look like and what it should say. A common e Card maker is, Canva.

Third and final step would be to download the e Card or copy the link to the card and attach it to the preferred contact method

There you go, you’ve just put a smile on their face.

Bonus tip: If the request is to help get the TV remote control even though they are just inches away from it, do it with a cheerful heart because as annoying as the request is, you should be thankful to still have them in your life.