Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
42 lines (34 loc) · 3.69 KB

asking_for_help.md

File metadata and controls

42 lines (34 loc) · 3.69 KB

How to ask for help

We will use Piazza for general questions and GitHub Issues for questions about your specific code (or grades). Aside from all the standard UBC policies and guidelines, here are some additional points about how you're expected to use these platforms.

General Q&A guidelines

  • For general questions, use Piazza. For questions involving your specific implementation of a homework question, open a GitHub issue in your assignment repo. For questions about grades, open an issue in your personal homework repo.
  • Do not post offensive or disrespectful content.
  • If you have a code problem, include as much relevant information as possible like:
    • your version of Python and relevant libraries
    • your operating system
    • the command you used to execute the program
    • the entire error message
  • Ask for help after an appropriate amount of thought and effort.
    • Read all the instructions before asking for help. Don’t ask questions whose answers are on the course website or homework instructions or on the first page of a Google search. These questions take time away from other instructional activities.
    • Don’t ask for help after being stuck for only 10 seconds. Make a reasonable effort to solve your problem.
    • On the other hand, don’t wait until after 5 hours of painful debugging before asking a question. At some point, this just becomes time wasted. This can be exceptionally frustrating if it turns out there was a bug in the assignment (it happens!).
    • As a very rough general guideline, try to work on something for 10-30 minutes and then ask for help.

Piazza-specific guidelines

  • Avoid including answers or partial answers in your question/post.
  • Do a quick search to make sure your question hasn't already been answered.
    • you can filter by tags like hw1 or do a keyword search
  • If you post a question and then figure out the answer yourself, please do not delete the question. It's still useful. Ideally, you'd post the answer to your own question for others to benefit.
  • When using equations, write them in LaTeX syntax and surround them with two dollar-signs. For example $$2^x$$ will render nicely in Piazza.

GitHub-specific guidelines

  • Open your Issue in the appropriate repository
    • If you want the course staff to review/help debug your code, open an Issue in your personal homework repository (e.g., hw1_goatcabin)
    • If you have a question/concern about your grades, open an Issue in your personal homework repository (e.g., hw1_goatcabin)
  • Tag the appropriate people
    • For questions about your code, tag @cpsc330-2020w-t1/staff in your issue's text; otherwise, we will not be notified and won't see it.
    • For questions about your grade, check Piazza to see if we posted a list of who graded which questions. If so, tag just the person who graded it. If you don't get a timely response (a couple days), then post a reminder and tag the instructor (@mgelbart). Again, if no one is tagged then no one will see your message.
  • Try to make the error reproducible and understandable
    • Include the exact command you used to run the code.
    • Include the entire error traceback, or at the very least the part showing the line number and error message.
  • Include a link to the file you want us to review, and a brief explanation.
    • If you want to be extra fancy, you can include a link to the specific line by appending a code like #L123 to the end of the URL (this would link to line 123). You can also link to a range of lines, like #L9-L17 to highlight lines 9-17. See, for example, this link.