In Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 I asked students to answer a few questions about what advice they would give future students in this course. Their advice, along with my own, is below. The student feedback can be summarized quite easily with Hofstadter’s Law.
Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
Don’t Set Yourself up for Failure
- Don’t take this course if you haven’t received at least a C- in both CSC241 and CSC221
- Very few students take CSC344 and CSC365 in the same semester and pass both. Avoid this scenario!
Set Yourself up for Success
- Back up your code! (Dropbox, Google Drive, …)
- Set up a Linux VM and get your development environments working early [CLion, IntelliJ + Cursive, IntelliJ + Scala, SWI Prolog, PyCharm]
- Complete the microprojects!
- When doing projects, follow the specs. Test with examples other than those provided!
- When your programs are buggy, develop minimal examples to expose the behavior to help you fix it.
- Do your best to complete projects on time – not completing projects leads to bad exam scores leads to… Nothing good!
Make the Most out of Class Time
- Pay attention in class
- Take good notes
- Don’t work on projects during class
- Come with questions, and ask them
Use Resources Available to You
- The “Useful Resources” section of the website – if you find more resources that should be there, let me know and I’ll add them
- Come to office hours
- Ask questions of the CSA members / folks in 425
- Make friends!
Be Metacognitive
- Start projects early – they always take longer than you think – every semester the most significant comment I get is that people learned time management.
- Know your weaknesses, address them early
A Final Thought…
“You will experience setbacks. These are signs of effort, not of failure. Setbacks come with striving, and striving builds expertise” — Make it Stick by Mark A. McDaniel and Peter C. Brown