Question

I had quite a bit of trouble solving the first half of Part 2, Problem Set 1. My only programming experience was long ago with BASIC, and while I was able to think of a loop that would work, I needed a "goto" statement to actually do it.

I gather Python doesn't approve of "goto" statements. So, I finally figured out how to define and call a function out of the Python Wiki. And wound up using a "global" variable in the function, which I also gather Python doesn't really approve of...

Anyway, I sense this was not all supposed to be necessary. My trouble was controlling a loop with two distinct counters (balance <= 0 and month >= 12). If someone could point out how this might be done within one loop, or without having to call a function, I'd appreciate seeing it.

I've attached the code I finished with here:
http://pastebin.com/67JsNQJ8

Again, it does work, but I assume functions were not the intended approach.

Answer 1

Well, I'll answer my own question here in case anyone is looking through and thinking something similar. It looks like the professor did his program with a big While True loop controlling the whole thing and the other smaller loops nested inside. "While True" is an infinite loop because it basically is saying "While (condition) is true, do the following" and what condition can be more true that "True"?! It's a good trick.