In this lesson, you'll be going through how to interact with the labs and assignments.
Don't Be Afraid to Code!
Learning by doing is an essential part of this course, you'll need to complete the labs, exercises found in the lessons, the projects, and the capstone to be able to get certified.
If only programming was as easy to absorb as a novel! Unfortunately, it's far too easy to skim through a course and not be able to actually code at the end.
Feelings are misleading! When you are reading through some technical material, it can often make sense. This feeling of "I understand", can give you the impression that you've learned it. Then, when you have to code something from scratch and draw on the underlying concepts contained within the materials, you can find yourself a bit lost.
The only way to master programming is to code. Code a lot, and don't be afraid to start over. Most code people write ends up getting thrown out. It's only after coding it at least twice that things start to come together, even for experienced programmers.
Practice With Labs
At the end of each chapter, you'll have to do some labs found in the labs repository. Some chapters will be lighter on labs than others, and some labs will be significantly more challenging than others---you'll need to do all of them!
When working with labs, you should follow the Git flow. You'll cover that in the next chapter.
Learn by Doing (Assignments)
In many lessons, you'll also come across special blocks that have the "Learn by Doing" title.
Learn by Doing
Here you'll find some instructions.
Make sure you do these exercises! You can do these in the Scratch folders in the labs. See the labs README for more details.
You'll find these throughout the course---they are required assignments.
To work on these, in your clone of the labs repository, you'll find a folder with some placeholder directories. If you have assignments and you aren't sure where to work on them, work on them here. Create files and folders as necessary, keeping things as organized as possible.
As with the labs, you'll want to follow the Git flow, which will be covered in the next chapter.
End of Module Project
As you've already covered, this course is organized around 4 main projects. Once you have finished the module, you'll first need to make sure that the module project is 100% functional. Once things are working more or less as intended, then you'll have to extend and/or polish it up.
For this, you'll also want to follow the Git flow. More on that in the next chapter.
Summary: How to Interact With Labs and Assignments
- The best way to master programming is by coding
- Don't be afraid to make mistakes
- The course offers a series of opportunities for you to practice what you learn:
- Labs
- Assignments (Learn by Doing)
- End of Module Projects