Practicals

Practical Assignments

You will have a limited number of practical assignments spread throughout the semester. Practical assignments are more like projects you will see in later classes, where the write-up is relatively simple/sparse, and your primary focus is problem-solving. We assume time will be spent figuring out the problem, discussing solutions with others (use the MS Team!), and more.

It is important to start early, as each practical assignment is designed to take 2-4 weeks to complete! Remember to ask for help early and often by going to the help desk.

Below are each of your practicals.

• Practical One - Knight Fight Debug
  A text based game that simply puts a knight against a randomly generated monster needs your help in fixing errors.

• Practical Two - Encrypted Message App
  Cipher, Compress, and Encode Strings and Messages

• Practical Three - STEM University Demographics
  A program that loads and calculates gender differences across STEM Majors at CSU.

• Practical Four - STEM University Demographics - Part 2
  A program that loads and calculates gender differences across STEM Majors at CSU, but now also writes out to HTML.

• Final Practical Project
  Final Project for CS 163/4 - Rebuilding Practicals 1-4.

Rubber Duck for Debugging?

Often the best thing you can do is explain what you are attempting to do to a friend. In the process of explaining it, you usually figure out your errors, and it helps give you a direction to go from there.

Sometimes in companies this can be a time-cost for other developers so thus the introduction of a Rubber Duck for testing. This gives you an object for you to talk to just like you would a friend. The object doesn’t have to give feedback (just like a friend doesn’t), but instead the process of talking through the code out loud will often provide insights into both development and errors.