What does it take to implement a chat system in Python (Not asking for code just advice before I start my little project)

[Michael Torrie]

On 07/17/2013 11:39 PM, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
> Not discourage you but this is a "been there, done that" kind of project.  
> You could learn more from reading somebody else is code. What hasn't been  
> done, and this would be very cool, is a chat program that works  
> peer-to-peer with no central server. To do this, you would probably need  
> to know about distributed hash tables and methods of piercing address  
> translation firewalls (think UDP).

University CS curricula across the world would disagree with your
assessment of the usefulness of "been there, done that."  Indeed that's
how you learn by doing simple things that have been done many times
before, and discovering the magic of programming and software design.
My uni's CS undergrad degree consists of dozens of contrived projects
that have been done before.  Web crawlers, compilers, expert systems,
chat systems, word counters, etc.

And that's the same way with all fields of endeavor.  Indeed it'd be
silly to tell an enthused hobby builder that building a shed is
pointless as it's been done before.  The shed itself, which would
arguably be useful, is beside the point.