This page contains tips and information about the many resources we provide for you to get help in the class when you need it. Regardless of if you're new to programming or have some experience, all of these resources can be helpful for you!
You will need to install the Java Development Kit (JDK) and the jGRASP IDE for CSE 142. Instructions for installing both can be found here.
The course staff is here to help you! We are always happy to help explain concepts or answer questions about the course. Here are some ways that you can get help from a member of the course staff:
This is where you can ask more specific questions about the homework spec or when TAs aren't holding support hours. Other students, TAs, and Brett monitor this board so you can potentially get help more quickly this way. You can access the Ed message board here.
Please do NOT post the code to solve a homework assignment (in whole or in part) on the class discussion board publicly, ever, for any reason. This includes posting partial code in progress in order to ask what is wrong with it. Also please do not provide highly detailed English descriptions of your solution to an assignment, such as describing exactly what methods, parameters, and loops you used to solve it. It is, however, acceptable and encouraged to discuss homework ideas in general terms.
If you do post solution code publicly, this will be considered a violation of the course academic integrity policy and may lead to punishment as outlined by that policy. If you need help on your program, please seek other means of help rather than posting your code. For example, if you want to show your code to a TA or instructor, please bring it to them in person at their hours instead. If you must post code on the message board, please make it a private post.
There are various resources provided to help you succeed with take-home assessments. We find that the students who succeed in 142 are the ones that use these tools regularly throughout the quarter.
The Code Quality Guide is the official source for writing good quality code in this course.
IMPORTANT: This guide covers the entire quarter, so it is not meant to be something that you read through in one sitting -- rather, it is a reference guide that you will hopefully be able to go back to as new topics are addressed. We've tried to make notes of approximately when certain code quality issues become relevant next to section headings. Here is a (linked!) table of suggested readings that you can go through before you turn in each homework assignment. Note that these suggested readings stack on top of each other -- ie: assignment 4's suggested readings include assignment 3's, which include assignment 2's, etc.
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The Indenter Tool can fix your indentation. You copy and paste code bits in and it will fix the indentation, then you can copy and paste the code back into your program. If you are using Ed to code, this tool may not be helpful to you as Ed has a "smart-indent" feature you can turn on to have your code auto-indent to the right levels.
Warning: This doesn't work perfectly if you omit curly braces around single line if and for loop statements. Use with caution and make sure to read the disclaimer on the page.
Some users who have their OS configured with a non-English primary language cannot properly see the compiler errors in jGRASP. To fix this problem, follow these steps in jGRASP.
Some Windows users who have their OS configured with a non-English primary language encounter an "unable to encode text using charset us-ascii" error when closing jGRASP. This seems to happen after opening and closing a file whose path contains non-English characters. Until this bug is fixed in jGRASP, we recommend only storing your Java files in folders with English names. Sorry about that!
Once jGRASP has seen a file with a non-English path, it will remember it, even if you've renamed the folder. To make it forget about the old path and stop displaying this error message, you'll need to delete your jGRASP workspace and create a new default one. Before doing this, make sure you know where on your computer your Java code is saved, because jGRASP will forget which files and folders you have open.
This will reset jGRASP back to its default settings, making it forget the old filename.