Office hours are a place for you to get support in the course from the CSE 143 course staff!

Instructor Support Hours

Hunter will host support hours simultaneously in person in his office (CSE 530) and Zoom. Some weeks might be Zoom only and Hunter will make that clear in any announcements to the class.

Info

For Week 1 and Week 2 of the quarter, Hunter’s office hours will only be on Zoom.

Hunter’s office hours:

Tues: 2 - 4

Zoom Link or CSE 530

If you are aren’t able to make Hunter’s office hours, you are also able to schedule a 1:1 meeting outside of them using the button below. Note that these meetings outside of office hours should be generally used for matters that you can’t receive help with on the Ed Discussion board or visiting the IPL (more below). There are many students in the class and only one Hunter 😅.

Schedule 1:1

Introductory Programming Lab (IPL)

TAs host office hours in the Introductory Programming Lab (IPL) in Mary Gates Hall 334. You can stop by the IPL any time it is open to talk with a TA about course concepts, or specifics of your take-home assessments.

Info

The IPL will open Tuesday Jan 11. For this second week of the quarter (Jan 11 - Jan 16), the IPL will be held only on Zoom. More details will be posted about future weeks. See more here.

IPL Schedule In-Person vs. Remote Schedule

What to ask at the IPL

  • We recommend having a TA teach you how to use the debugger tool in your IDE here. It can be an incredibly valuable tool. jGRASP’s debugging tool is prime for pinpointing where things are going wrong in your program
  • If you find a section problem related to the homework material that you are unable to figure out on your own, this is a great thing to work with a TA on in great detail
  • Asking the TA to give you a mini-lecture on a concept or example you didn’t quite get from lecture/section. This is another area where TAs will talk as in depth as the want about the material
  • Here are a couple examples of good hours questions:
    • “My code isn’t working. Can you show me how to use the debugger so I can figure this out?”
    • “I was debugging my code and for some reason even though I passed the variable as a parameter, the value wasn’t updated in main. Do you know why that is?”
    • “I don’t understand what Brett meant when he said X is bad style. Can you explain?”

What the IPL can’t help you with

  • Expecting the TA to point out exactly which lines of code are broken and/or how. The TAs are happy to show you debugging strategies and help you step through your code, but you should be deciding what changes to make.
  • Asking a TA whether or not something will be a deduction. TAs will not pre-grade your take-home assessment. You can ask general questions and discuss pros and cons of a certain approach, but how you solve the problem is ultimately your decision. If you want insight into how your assessment will be graded, you can consult the generic rubric in the syllabus
  • Here are a couple examples of unproductive office hour questions:
    • “My code is broken. Please tell me the line of code I have to change to make it work.”
    • “Will doing X on my take-home assessment result in a worse grade?”