Yesterday's Lab, or Coding is Hard and So is Teaching It

I want to reflect a bit on our lab last night.

First of all, thank you very much for your patience. That did not go smoothly at all; I appreciate that you didn’t mutiny.

Second of all, please know that I also understand that things didn’t go exceptionally well. Jekyll took us the first 40 minutes to get setup, and that derailed our coding lesson.

Third, as I expected, we might not get through our coding practice as quickly as I had planned initially. Please know that we will revisit some of the same material next time, and I won’t actually present anything from coding lesson 3 next time. We’ll revisit material from lessons 1 & 2.

Fourth, please read the coding lessons very carefully on your own time. This should clarify what we did in class. It’s not a bad idea to read the coding lessons twice: once before lab, once after.

Fifth, let me be very clear about our daily expectations for next time. The ball expectations are outlined in ball.

As for refactoring, please revise your code according to the following spec:

• You must use variables to make the code more readable.
• Please write and call at least one function of your own.
• It is up to you if you would like to use objects. We will cover that ground again next lab.

I am sorry that my trip to Toronto falls at an inopportune time. If you felt you struggled in lab last night, please do not despair. Instead, please reach out to me: we will have a coding meetup before class on Thursday, and I will be available all day next Friday to meet.

Update: I’ve also added links to related Daniel Shiffman videos at the beginning of Coding Lessons 1 & 2. This should give you another perspective on matters. We don’t always stress the same things or take the same approaches, but if his stuff resonates more than my teaching, then by all means, follow his curriculum in parallel with ours.