Getting Help

You are encouraged to contact an ISA when you need help with an assignment. The course instructors are always happy to help students with assignments; however, they simply don't have enough time to handle all of the student questions themselves for such a large course -- that is precisely why we hire ISAs. Naturally, if an ISA is unavailable, or if you feel that the instructor's point of view is required, the instructors will be happy to help.

You should first check the Announcments page for your course to see if there is any relevant information there (for example, known errors or problems with the current assignment). Some courses have newsgroups or bulletin boards on UW-Ace to seek help from course staff and fellow students (with conceptual issues and assignment clarification rather than code debugging). ISAs hold consulting hours in the Computer Science Consulting Centre located in MC 4065; the schedule will be on your course's website. Staff are also available by e-mail; the generic address will be csXXX@student.cs.uwaterloo.ca where XXX is the number of the course in question.

Don't expect any course staff member to hand you an answer on a silver platter. Do your part! That generally means attending all lectures, doing the lab exercises, and doing some initial thinking regarding assignment problems. Course staff will ask to see whatever work you have done on the problem (UML designs, pseudocode, notes from Class, etc.) before offering any assistance in debugging code.

Hints for Increasing Your Assignment Marks

Understanding the Problem

• Read the question thoroughly. Read it several times while you're working on the assignment just to make sure you're still on track.
• Ask questions if you aren't sure about something. Better to ask a question than make a wrong assumption.
• Look for the points of connection between class, practicum, lab, and assignment. They are there! Each assignment is designed to exercise the concepts learned during the previous week. Always ask yourself how those concepts could be applied to this problem.
• Understand what you are to submit for marking.

Designing your Solution

• Don't start working on the computer too soon. Always take time to design your solution on paper first.
• Use step-wise refinement to break a large problem into small pieces.
• Write test cases first to help you understand the functions you need to write.

Using the Computer

• Write skeletal code first, then compile/run. Get any syntax errors as soon as possible so they can be fixed immediately rather than waiting for a massive debug session at the end.
• Work incrementally; get one or two use case working for a particular function, and then work on the others. Work on one or two functions first, and then move on once those are working
• Always make sure your program compiles/runs before submitting it.
• Test your program. Run it and try a wide variety of inputs, then fix any bugs that crop up. Start with the most common inputs, of course.

Time Management

• Begin early so you have time to think about things while doing your laundry or preparing supper. Even seasoned programmers can't count the number of times they've been stumped by a problem for an hour or more -- and then think of the solution almost as soon as they leave their office and do something else.
• Beginning early gives you more opportunities to ask course staff questions about the assignment (and wait for their answer).
• Beginning early also allows you to make use of any public test facilities for your course so you can detect whether you are misinterpreting the assignment specs well before the assignment is due.

Style Issues

• Follow the style guidelines listed in the resources for the particular language you are using.
• Document carefully. Make sure all functions are documented appropriately, and that extra explanation is given for any potentially confusing parts of your program (both for the markers, and for yourself later).