Installing Steem Python - A Journey

After a little over 4 weeks I finally got a working version of steem python on my Windows 10 computer. My motivations are not to become the next great witness candidate to be working to try to get your votes, but rather just to poke around a little and see what's behind the interface on Steemit. By the way, this is not intended to be tutorial on how to get steem python installed, more like a commentary. As a little background, I have been programming since the late 1970's as part of my education and a hobby. The languages I've worked with include the original 8086 assembly language, basic, Fortran, C, C++, and php. The task of having to learn how to code python didn't really concern me.

My starting point was to read several articles written here on Steemit that were written as tutorials for the installation, some of them should have been posted with the fiction tag. A great number of the tutorials recommended installing the Anaconda version of python. Others seemed to recommend the Python.org version of python. I chose to start out with the Anaconda version.

So I did a day or so of research on Anaconda before starting out. After about two and a half weeks of installing and uninstalling Anaconda, frustration had set in with no working version of python much less an installation of steem python. One of the things I found out was that when Anaconda is uninstalled, it doesn't fix system variables, such as PATH variables, changed or generated with the installation. I did finally get to the point that I could open python at a command prompt and execute some simple commands, but when I tried to write a small program with those same commands and execute it there would be problems. After spending time, too much time, trying to get the Anaconda version to work I change tactics.

Still staying within the Windows 10 operating system, I moved to the python.org version of python using Visual Studio Code as an interface. Here I had a little more success and quickly got a working version of python installed. I could issue commands at the command prompt and run them through a simple program without any problems. I thought I had this beat, how hard could it be now just to get steem python working. Wrong again!

When I issued the command to start installing steem python I had errors. When I fixed those errors, I had other errors to fix. I continued working through these errors, one at the time getting each fixed. I finally got to the point that I had one error I couldn't resolve. It was got CLI.exe failing with an exit code of 2. Digging around, I found this error was not uncommon but never found a solution. After another week and a half, it was time to change strategies again.

This option was to move to Ubuntu (UNIX for those who aren't familiar). I have used UNIX in the past but never became really proficient at it and was not looking forward to relearning the little bit I use to know. But this seemed to be the best option at this point. So a couple more days of reading about Ubuntu and how to install python and steem python and I was ready to start.

Yesterday, I sat down and installed Ubuntu. Tested it and it seemed to be working fine. Next step was to install python. It went in relatively easy. There were some issues, but Ubuntu offered up solutions to these problems that worked, no digging around for answers. Now steem python. Again there were a couple of issues and again Ubuntu was there telling me what command to issue to make it work properly.

After only a few hours, a relatively short time compared to the time I had been working on this, I was able to use steem python commands to take a look at my account. Amazing, what I had been working on for over 4 weeks really only took a few hours. So now I can get started with my poking around in steem python while at the same time learning UNIX, python, and the steem python procedures. It may not sound like much of a hobby to some of you, but for me this type of thing is a way to relax. Isn't that what any hobby should be?