CS 70

Getting Help with Homework 2

Ask your Homework 2 questions here. Use the box at the bottom of this page. Your question is posted to this page for the class to see, under an animal name rather than your own—and if you would rather only the course staff saw it, there is a box to tick for that.

Course staff read this page. So do your classmates, and a classmate answering first is a good outcome rather than a failure of the system.

  • Goat speaking

    Meh. Why not just email somebody?

  • LHS Cow speaking

    Because one answer here reaches everyone with the same problem, and on this assignment a lot of people hit the same turtle-and-embroidery snags within an hour of each other.

  • Duck speaking

    So if I'm stuck on getting a pattern to stitch, somebody else probably is too?

  • LHS Cow speaking

    Almost certainly. That is exactly the kind of question that is worth asking in public.

Before you ask

  • Re-read the part you are on, and check the Turtle Class Specification if your question is about what a Turtle method does.
  • Compile on the CS 70 server, and read the first error, not the last one—a later error is often just fallout from an earlier one.
  • If your question is about a lesson rather than the assignment, ask on that lesson's Key Points page instead, where it sits next to the material.

Asking a question we can actually answer

  • Push your code first. Commit, push, and say so—then whoever picks up your question can look at the real thing rather than at a description of it.
  • The exact command you ran—pasted, not summarised.
  • The exact output or error, in full, in a ``` ... ``` code block. Compiler and linker errors are often long and the most useful line is often not the last one, so paste all of it.
  • What you expected instead, and what you have already tried.

Things that go wrong on Homework 2 specifically

  • Linker errors (undefined reference, duplicate symbol). This assignment is partly about separate compilation, so these are expected learning moments. Say which files you compiled and linked, and in what commands.
  • The Turtle doesn't draw what you expected. Say what you told it to do and what came out, and, if you can, attach or describe the .svg preview.
  • The embroidery file looks wrong, or won't open. Say how you generated it and how you tried to view it—remember .dst files are binary.
  • Your partner's copy works and yours doesn't. Usually one of you has not pulled the other's latest commits. Pull first, then say what still differs.

When a conversation would be faster

  • Ask in lab, especially for anything where someone looking at your screen beats a paragraph of description.
  • Come to grutoring or office hours for anything conceptual, or for the questions that are hard to phrase.
  • For anything personal, or about the course rather than the code, contact a professor directly.

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