The Timekeeper | The Architect

Time is a river, but for a coder, it's just numbers. The datetime scroll lets us freeze time, travel to the future, and measure the past.

Hoppy needs to know exactly when the "Great Migration" begins.

The `datetime` Spell

This scroll is powerful. It has spells for dates (Year-Month-Day) and precise times (Hour:Minute:Second).

import datetime

# What day is it?
today = datetime.date.today()
print(today) # e.g., 2025-10-24

# Create a specific date
halloween = datetime.date(2025, 10, 31)

# Time travel! (Math with dates)
days_left = halloween - today
print(days_left.days) # 7

Get Today

Use datetime.date.today() to capture the current moment.

Set Properties

The Great Migration is set for January 1st, 2030. create a date object for it: datetime.date(2030, 1, 1).

Calculate Duration

Subtract today from migration_day. Python is smart enough to know this creates a "Time Delta" (difference). Print the .days property of the result.

Programmers count time in weird ways. Sometimes we count seconds from 1970 (Unix Epoch), but datetime makes it human-readable!

Suggested Solution

Expand

Solution:

import datetime

# Step 1: Today
today = datetime.date.today()
print("Today: " + str(today))

# Step 2: Migration Day (2030-1-1)
migration_day = datetime.date(2030, 1, 1)

# Step 3: Calculation
time_left = migration_day - today
print("Days until migration: " + str(time_left.days))

Advanced Tips

Want more? Click to expand

F. Timezones (The Horror)

datetime.date is simple. But dealing with timezones (like UTC vs EST) is one of the hardest things in programming.
Lucky for Hoppy, Pythondia only has one timezone!

The datetime Spell

F. Timezones (The Horror)

The `datetime` Spell