Forem: lilo-creator

My First Hands-On with Blockchain, Ethereum & Lisk (And Yes, MetaMask Was Involved) 🧠🔗

lilo-creator — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 08:21:24 +0000

So I recently joined a session that introduced me to the world of blockchain, Ethereum, and Web3 — and honestly, it was both mind-blowing and exciting.

Before this, I’d heard all the buzzwords: decentralization, smart contracts, wallets... but now it’s all starting to make sense.

What Actually Happened

We started with the basics—what blockchain really is, how Ethereum fits into the picture, and what Web3 is trying to change.

At first, it felt a bit abstract, but the more we explored, the more I saw how it all connects:

Blockchain isn’t just hype — it's a whole new way of storing and verifying data.
Ethereum isn’t just a cryptocurrency — it’s a platform for building real apps (but decentralized).
And Web3? It's about giving people control back.

Then Came MetaMask 🦊

Toward the end of the session, we did something practical: installing MetaMask.

If you’ve never used it, MetaMask is a crypto wallet that lives in your browser. It lets you connect to decentralized apps (dApps) and explore the Web3 world.

Setting it up was straightforward. I downloaded the extension, created a wallet, saved my recovery phrase (very important!), and just like that, I was Web3-ready.

Adding Lisk Networks

Here’s the part that made it all feel real — we connected MetaMask to two Lisk networks:
lisk mainnet
lisk sepolia testnet

first click the link then on the top right you will be able to connect to your meta mask wallet approve the connection.
the next step is searching for the lisk mainnet and lisk sepolia testnet and connect them to the metamask wallet
your wallet should be able to look like this after the connection

Lisk sepolia Testnet
Lisk mainnet

🧠 Understanding MVC vs MVT in Django

lilo-creator — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:25:26 +0000

✨ My First Steps in Django: Learning the Architecture Behind the Magic
As I began my Django journey, I kept hearing about something called MVT and people kept comparing it to MVC. It was confusing at first, but once I understood the structure, everything made so much more sense.

💡 What is MVC (Model-View-Controller)?

The MVC pattern is a common way to organize web applications. It separates your code into 3 parts:

Model – Manages the data and business rules (like a database table).
View – The user interface; what the user sees (HTML pages).
Controller – Takes user input, communicates with the model, and decides what view to display.

🧾 Example in MVC:

A user clicks a button to view products.
The Controller processes that action, retrieves the products from the Model.
Then it sends them to the View, which displays the list of products.

🧩 How Django Follows MVT (Model-View-Template)

**
Django doesn’t follow MVC strictly. Instead, it follows MVT, which works like this:

Model – Same as MVC. It defines the database structure using Python classes.
View – This is where Django puts the logic to fetch data and return a response. It acts like the Controller in MVC.
Template – The HTML page that shows data to the user.

So where is the Controller in Django? 🤔
Django handles it internally using its powerful URL routing and request-response system. You don’t need to write a separate controller file — Django views handle that for you!

💬 Final Thoughts

**
Learning the difference between MVC and MVT helped me understand how Django separates concerns and organizes its files. Even though it’s not exactly MVC, Django’s approach makes development fast, clean, and fun — especially with templates and the built-in admin!

🚀 How I Created Two Django Applications with Their Own Templates

lilo-creator — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 18:25:36 +0000

In todays Django learning i successfully built a project that contains two separate applications, each with its own HTML templates. In this article, I’ll walk you through what I did and what I learned — from setting up the project to organizing templates. Before you start the project you need to have;

1.Python (version 3.10 or higher recommended)
2. Code Editor ( Visual Studio Code)
3.Browser

I followed the below steps:

1 🛠 Setting Up the Django Project

first open the vscode and open the terminal
then Create a Virtual Environment & Activate It

python

   # Create a folder for your project
    mkdir my_django_project
    cd my_django_project

    # Create virtual environment
    python -m venv venv

    # Activate the virtual environment
    .\venv\Scripts\activate  # for Windows

After activation, you'll see this:

 (venv) C:\Users\YourName\my_django_project>

2.📦 Install Django

pip install django

next lets run the code

python manage.py runserver

click the links provided and you with see such an image

3.🛠Create Django Project & Apps

**
use the following commands to to create the main project and the two applications

# Create the project
django-admin startproject my_project .

# Create two apps
python manage.py startapp users
python manage.py startapp blog

4. Register Apps in config/settings.py

**
Open my_project/settings.py and add the apps

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'users',
    'attendance',
]

5. Create Templates in Each App

**
In each app folder, create template directories like this:

users/
└── templates/
    └── users/
        └── home.html

blog/
└── templates/
    └── blog/
        └── check_in.html

Then add some HTML like this in home.html:

6. Update views.py in each app

from django.shortcuts import render
users/views.py

def home(request):
    return render(request, 'users/home.html')

blog/views.py

from django.shortcuts import render

def check_in(request):
    return render(request, 'blog/check_in.html')

7. Create urls.py in both apps

**
users/urls.py

from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.home, name='users-home'),
]

blog/urls.py

from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.home, name='users-home'),
]

8.Update Main URLconf in config/urls.py

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('', include('users.urls')),
    path('blog/', include('blog.urls')),
]

9.Final Folder Structure Overview

my_django_project/
├── my_project/
│   └── settings.py, urls.py, ...
├── users/
│   ├── views.py
│   └── templates/users/home.html
├── blog/
│   ├── views.py
│   └── templates/blog/check_in.html
├── venv/
├── manage.py

💡 What I Learned

**
How Django structures projects and apps
How to route URLs within multiple apps
How to keep templates organized per app

🔍 Understanding Python Data Types

lilo-creator — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:31:39 +0000

Python is a popular programming language known for its simplicity and readability. But before you dive deep into coding, one of the most important concepts to grasp is data types.
Think of data types like different kinds of boxes you can use to store information. Each box (data type) holds a specific kind of value — like numbers, words, lists of things, etc.
Below are some of the data types that are common;

1️⃣ Numbers

**
These are used to store numeric values.
Integers (int): Whole numbers — e.g., 3, 0, -5
Floats (float): Decimal numbers — e.g., 3.14, -0.5
Complex (complex): Numbers with real and imaginary parts — e.g., 2 + 3j

age = 21        # int
height = 5.6    # float
z = 2 + 3j      # complex

2️⃣ Strings (str)

A string is a sequence of characters — usually used to represent text.

name = "Lilian"
greeting = 'Hello, world!'

3️⃣ Booleans (bool)

**
Booleans represent True or False values — great for decisions and logic.

is_logged_in = True
has_passed = False

4️⃣ Lists (list)

**
Lists are ordered collections of items — like a shopping list 🛒.

fruits = ["apple", "banana", "mango"]
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4]

5️⃣ Tuples (tuple)

**
A tuple is just like a list — but it cannot be changed after creation.

It's immutable.
coordinates = (10, 20)

6️⃣ Dictionaries (dict)

**
Dictionaries store key-value pairs — like an ID and its name.

user = {
    "name": "Lilian",
    "age": 22,
    "is_active": True
}

7️⃣ Sets (set)

**
A set is a collection of unique items, no duplicates allowed.

colors = {"red", "blue", "green", "red"}
print(colors)  # {'red', 'blue', 'green'}

🛠️ Mastering Git & GitHub

lilo-creator — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 11:11:11 +0000

On day two i was mastering git and github Below are some of this things i highlighted
**

🚀 1. Forking a Repository

**
Forking means creating your own copy of someone else's GitHub repository.
steps:
Go to any public repo on GitHub and click “Fork”.
Explore the copy created in your account — this is now yours to modify.
🧠 Tip: Think of forking as "duplicating to contribute."

🤝 2. Collaboration

**
This is working with others on a shared project.
Steps:
Join a team project or contribute to open source.
Practice using branches to isolate your changes.
Learn to pull updates from the main project to stay in sync.
🔧 Hands-on Task: Clone a team repo, create a new branch, make a change, and push it.

🔃 3. Pull Requests (PRs)

**
This is a request to merge your changes into the original repository.
Steps:
After pushing your changes, click “New pull request” on GitHub.
Write a clear title and description for your PR.
Tag someone for review and wait for feedback.
📚 Practice idea: Fork any repo, add a README update, and submit a pull request.

⚔️ 4. Merge Conflicts

**
It happens when Git can’t automatically merge two versions of a file.
How to grasp it:
Simulate it: Edit the same line of code on two branches.
Try merging and resolve the conflict using VS Code or terminal.
Commit the resolved file to finalize.
⚠️ Lesson: Always pull the latest changes before pushing yours.

👀 5. Code Review

**
This is Reviewing someone else's code before it’s merged.
How to grasp it:
Learn to comment constructively on PRs.
Use GitHub’s "Files changed" tab to explore differences.
Suggest changes or approve if everything looks good.
🤝 Growth Tip: Volunteer to review a teammate’s PR.

📝 6. GitHub Issues

**
This is a way to track bugs, tasks, or enhancements.
How to grasp it:
Create an issue to report a bug or propose a feature.
Label it appropriately and assign it to someone (or yourself).
Use it to track progress and link it in your PR.
📌 Try it: Open a new issue in a test repo and reference it in a PR .

🧑🏽‍💻 7. Essential Git Commands

**
This are terminal commands that help you control Git.
This are some basic commands:
git clone <repo_url> git checkout -b new-branch git add . git commit -m "your message" git push origin new-branch git pull origin main git merge main

☁️ 8. Pushing Changes to GitHub

This is Uploading your local changes to your online repo.
steps:
After committing your changes, use:
git push origin branch-name
Then Go to GitHub and check your changes online.

Django Setup

lilo-creator — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 17:23:14 +0000

Hey devs 👋🏽
This is my very first article here on Dev.to — yaay! 🥳
I recently set up my development environment from scratch, and I thought, why not share it? 💻
If you're just starting out in Python, web development, or DevOps, these are some tools you’ll definitely need.
Here's a simple, step-by-step guide I used to install:

1 Git

**
For Windows:
Go to https://git-scm.com/
Download the latest version.
Follow the installer prompts (use defaults if unsure).
sign up and create an account

2. Python 3.10

first check your version :
python --version
If it’s below 3.10 or not found then in :
Windows:
Download from the official site👉 https://www.python.org/downloads/
During installation, check the box that says “Add Python to PATH”!

3. Text Editor: VS Code

To install VSCode:
Download from https://code.visualstudio.com/
Install extensions like Python

4. WSL for Windows Users

This lets you run Linux on Windows — perfect for dev work.
Steps:
Open PowerShell as Admin and run:
wsl --install
Restart your PC.
On boot, choose your Linux distro (Ubuntu is perfect for beginners).
Set up username & password.

5. Installing Docker

Docker is essential for containerizing your apps.

To install:
Download Docker Desktop from(https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop)
Install & follow the prompts.
Restart if needed.
Check if it's working:
docker --version

6. Configuring Git with GitHub SSH

This step avoids having to type your password all the time when pushing code to GitHub.
Step-by-step:
1.Check for existing SSH keys:
ls ~/.ssh
2.If none, generate one:
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "lmlilian702@gmail.com"
Just press Enter through the prompts.
3.Add the SSH key to your GitHub:
cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub
Copy the output, go to GitHub:
Settings > SSH and GPG keys > New SSH key
Paste and save.
4.Test it:
ssh -T git@github.com