CSE 160 - HW3 - Advice from 14wi students:

"What do you wish you had known before you started?  What
would you do differently?  What advice would you offer
to future students?"

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Read the instruction carefully and start homework early

Reading the assignment is work in itself. It is helpful reading that earlier in the week so you spend the last few days before the due date working on coding. 

I would have started a bit earlier. The program was a bit more time-consuming than I expected. It took me awhile to notice that the error in my program was due to unexpected mutations in my list.

I would have read the entire write-up more carefully

I would have started this assignment sooner and asked questions when they came up. 

How long the assignment would take.

I would definitely tell students to draw out on paper what you need to do or what you are going to as you step through stuff with for loops and such. And draw out a logic flow chart.

I wish I had understood appending lists and creating empty lists better before starting the homework.

I probably should have looked at the homework a little sooner.  I first started working on it Tuesday but really didn't make most of my progress until Thursday night and Friday.  I would definitely recommend that students start early.  Also I suggest adding lots of print statements when writing code to just determine whether it's doing what you want it to or not.  

I wish I had known how challenging and complex it was before starting and I wish I had tried to understand the directions better before attempting to code.

"I made a lot of small tests outside of the program to test code and then moved it to the main program. I also used the online python tutor to help me figure out how to make a lists of lists, very useful!! 

I did draw out on paper how I wanted my functions to work before writing them and while it was easy to figure out what the code should do a lot of my time was spent wrestling with how to get the proper notation for manipulation lists/string... i want to have more practice with proper code notation to make this process faster/easier. 
"