Curiouskid comments on Computer Science and Programming: Links and Resources - Less Wrong

29 Post author: XiXiDu 29 May 2012 01:17PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (47)
Tags: computer science programming

Comments (47)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Curiouskid 07 July 2012 02:04:34AM 0 points [-]

I've taken the AP CS class at my high school (so, I know a bit of Java). I also just finished the CS101 class on Udacity (which was lots of fun). However, after trying to do the Udacity CS253 class, I noticed that when I got stuck, there was less help (unlike CS101 and my AP CS class). It's basically impossible to move forward when you're stuck unless you have somebody experienced hovering over you. It's also not too fun to bug all your friends to help you do something really basic.

My question is which of these resources can you use without getting hopelessly stuck? Alternatively, what can you do if you're hopelessly stuck other than bug your friends?

Comment author: dbaupp 09 September 2012 04:18:57PM *  0 points [-]

This is a little late, but:

  • you should Google things. I know this isn't so useful often, but, especially with popular online courses, others may have posted answers, which can help you over the hump. Also, it's an intensely useful skill/habit to have.

  • you can ask questions on StackOverflow. Be careful to phrase it as "I'm learning x, and I'm not sure how to do y, could someone point me in the right direction" (where y is quite specific), rather than "Give me the code to do y" or something too general. As an essentially arbitrary example,

    I'm doing the Udacity CS253 class, and I'm not sure how to get the information after the ? out of a URL like http://mywebsite.com/blah?a=1&b=2 in Python, I would like it so that there is some way to ask for the value of a or the value of b. (I've tried Google but I don't know the correct terminology, so no luck there.)

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit