Programming 101

Programming vs. Coding?

• “Coding, as the word suggests, is involved in writing code. A coder translates the requirements into the programming language of their choice and writes lines of codes. Programming, on the other hand, is a much broader term that involves coding AND other tasks like problem solving, critical thinking, conceptualizing, and understanding algorithms and data structures.”
  • Nicholas Hargreaves in this Quora discussion)

Pre-Coding Steps

• Visual Guide to CS50’s Resources by Emily Hong
• How to Solve a CS50 Pset guide by Annie Chen
• Pseudocode
  • lecture notes
  • reference sheet
• Drawing/Mapping Your Program’s “Flow”

Getting Help and Helping Yourself

• Use CS50’s resources and tools!
• Google stuff!
  • a lot of people are worried about academic honesty
    • my rule of thumb: don’t Google anything with “CS50” or the problem set’s name or “Harvard” or anything else that might take you directly to something “unreasonable”
      • if you stumble upon something “unreasonable” by accident/indirectly, best to reach out to heads
      • and if you make a mistake and do something unreasonable, also email heads
  • all of that^^ being said, there are tons of things you can Google that are aok (and even recommended and expected!)
    • some of my top recommendations:
      • stackoverflow and Quora discussions
      • tutorialspoint materials
      • Khan Academy and Codecademy
• Collaborate with your peers! (in a “reasonable” way)

Debugging

Everything from using print statements to commenting out parts of your program (this is a skill that will take a while to learn)

• lecture notes
• more lecture notes (tools)
• lecture notes on Rubber Duck Debugging
• short
• reference sheet on Bugs and Debugging
• Stanford’s Debugging Strategies
• Mitch Duncan on 5 Steps to a Bullet-Proof Debugging Strategy

Being Stuck

• Brian Mills on The Basics To Getting Unstuck While Coding
• Itamar Turner-Trauring on 6 ways to get unstuck and code faster

Testing

• MrBool on What is Testing and Debugging Strategy

Design

• Some questions you can ask yourself when thinking about design:
  • Is there repetition that could be eliminated?
  • Are there unnecessary loops?
  • Is my code scalable?
• reference sheet on Principles of Good Design
• short on Magic Numbers

Style

• Consult CS50’s style guide!
• Nicholas C. Zakas on Why Coding Style Matters
• Jared Yarn on Who the Heck Wrote This? 3 Ways to Deal With Bad Code