Python far_away challenge seemingly does not provide enough context on the datetime being considered by the challenge.

They are difficult to read and understand what the challenges are asking for sometimes. Though if you stick with it and work through each line one by one, they usually come clear. It takes patience. However it is of course possible that there are questions we just don't get what they are asking us to do. Nobody is to blame, and I think Treehouse appreciates our feedback. That is what makes us all better as students and as teachers. Here is my code used to solve this challenge.

import datetime

def far_away(x):
    return x + datetime.datetime.now()

import datetime

def far_away(timedelta): datetime.datetime.now() return timedelta + datetime.datetime.now()

I get the impression that I am not the only person who read the far_away code challenge and had no clue what I was being asked to do. A concrete sink-or-swim approach where you are asked to create a function that returns the end time of a t-minute appointment would have been clearer than what the code challenge now says.

Here is what I might have done differently if it were my course:

1. The code challenge following the first video should have included questions on timedelta objects.
2. There should be explicit code challenge questions on each of the following points, since they are key and easy for beginners to miss:
   • timedelta objects can be created by taking the difference of two datetime objects.
   • timedelta objects display different attributes than datetime objects do.
   • Nonetheless, timedelta objects can be added to/subtracted from datetime objects, and the result is a datetime object.
   • timedelta objects can also be created directly.
   • timedelta objects may be assigned attributes (such as hours) which are not among the displayed attributes, but which will be converted to one of the displayed attributes.
3. I would step through some variation of the appointment example in a code challenge before asking an abstract question involving some unspecified "timedelta."

I think the Python courses are in general badly organized with unclear expositions in the videos, not enough reinforcement in the exercises, and confusing code challenges. Touching up the code challenges isn't enough. These courses should be redone.

Kenneth/Kevin:

I'm a bit confused since I originally overthought how to solve the challenge and I feel my reverse course of "keep it simple stupid" may be an answer that passes the challenge but does not imply a correct understanding. Without giving away the answer...

# Write a function called far_away that takes a timedelta

import datetime

def far_away(tdelta):

# Add that timedelta to datetime.datetime.now() and return the resulting datetime object
    return tdelta + datetime.datetime.now()

This code passed the challenge since it's all that's being asked, but I feel that it may be so simple that it doesn't show my understanding of the material. It may be that the challenge is simply saying to return x + y, where x is a timedelta (i.e. datetime.timedelta(hours=9) and y is datetime.datetime.now()) and the challenge fills in the variables with backend code.

Is that correct? Was I just overthinking the solution?

Yeah, that's all it's meant to do. Basically just shows that you understand that timedeltas and datetimes can be added together.

Another completely trivial exercise that took forever to do because it was badly posed.

This passed, just read it as it states

import dateline def far_way(timedelta): return datetime.datime.now() + timedelta

Hey, Kenneth Love:

I appreciate the prompt answer.

It's still somewhat unclear what to do after the arthmetic. From my understanding, it returns a datetime object from the operation while the challenge still states it wants a datetime object.

It's unclear based on the previous videos so far (unless I extremely snoozed during the last video) how to change it to a datetime object if i'm incorrect, and whether that makes sense for python to convert a timeDelta to a datetime explicitly.

If two datetime objects being added/substract result into a timedelta and a datetime +/- a timedelta does indeed equal a datetime, I'm confused why a return statement doesn't in fact return a datetime object that's correct.