CSC300: How to succeed in CS

(Click here for one slide per page)

I like this TED talk from Eduardo Briceno:

The amount of time spent on a function does not amount to much.

If you are not working effectively, you can spend months on a single function and never get it correct.

So how do you work efficiently? Key things:

• Work out lots of examples before you try to code.

• Work on paper before you write any code.

• Write automated tests to tell you whether you got it right.

• Work in pieces

Don't code everything at once.

• Pick an example

• Work through the example on paper

  • Be precise!
  • Use variable names

• Type in a test

  • Make sure you have a test for the example

• Type in the code

  • If the test fails, use the debugger!

• Repeat until your code is correct on all examples

For any repetitive process, start in the middle!

• Middle: Figure out how to make progress

• End: Figure out when to stop

• Begining: Figure out what needs to be done to get going

When your code does something unexpected:

• Make sure you understand why

• Before you change your code

• Don't play wack-a-mole with bugs

Getting the homework correct is not enough

• The first time you solve something it could take days, and may require help

  • Once you get a solution, you are not done

• First, try to make your code as simple as possible

  • It should be self-explantory to an average programmer
  • Use meaningful names for everything but induction variables
  • Include no unnecessary conditionals or extra lines of code

• Then, create a copy of the homework and erase your solutions

• Upon waking the next day, attempt to redo the problems
  • Do not look at your previous solution
  • Do not ask for help, either from friends or from the internet

• Repeat this process until you can write each single function correctly in five minutes or less

  • Only then have you internalized the solution
  • It is not enough to be able to get the answer
  • You must be able to do it quickly

• Invent a variant of the problem

  • Solve it!

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

People often mistake familiarity for understanding.

They open the textbook after getting home from a lecture, and they recognize the material.

They think: I get this.

Then they take a test -- and bomb it.

You need to learn patterns of thought

• Working from the middle
• Working incrementally
• Being precise

You need to learn patterns of coding

• Going through an array list
• Going through a linked list
• Going through a tree, graph, ...

Imagine you are learning tennis

• You need to practice!
• Watching is not enough
• Getting it right once is not enough

• Don't be afraid of making mistakes

  • Think of programming as play

• Don't tell yourself I can't

  • You can

• Don't tell yourself I just don't get

  • Take ownership of your learning

• Don't be afraid of asking for help

  • Use all available resources

• Learn to be independent

  • Repeat anything hard until it's easy

An extract from The Mythical Man-Month Fred Brooks, edited slightly:

Why is programming fun? What delights may its practioner expect as their reward?

• First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in their mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of their own design. I think this delight must be an image of God's delight in making things, a delight shown in the distinctness and newness of each leaf and each snowflake.

• Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it helpful. In this respect the programming system is not essentially different from the child's first clay pencil holder "for a parent's office."

• Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning. The programmed computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate.

• Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical, and sometimes both.

• Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. They build their castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. ...

  Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separately from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.

Programming then is fun because it gratifies creative longings built deep within us and delights sensibilities we have in common with all people.

Revised: 2008/03/17 13:01