I say “me” and “I” in this guide but this applies everywhere
You are not in CS 0007 anymore. It is no longer acceptable to send an email with your code attached and a one-sentence “It doesn’t work, what’s wrong?”
Asking good questions is really about explaining your current understanding. If you tell me where you are, it’s much easier for me to lead you to the solution.
Don’t say, “can I ask a question?” The answer is always yes. I know you think that it’s rude not to ask permission, but it’s literally my job to be here to answer your questions, and asking-to-ask just wastes time.
Show me any error messages. Not a summary, not part of the message, the actual message.
- ❌ I got an error
- ❌ I got a compiler error
- ❌ The compiler said something about my function
- ❌ The compiler said unreachable statement
- ✅ The compiler said Lab3.java:62: error: unreachable statement
Give me your code. Don’t describe what it does, just attach it. But you can really help me by narrowing down where the problem is happening. Part of that is the error message, yes, but you could also explain to me:
- what part of the assignment you’re working on
- any stack trace that you got from a runtime error (449 students, that means using
gdb) - what you think is going wrong
I am not a compiler. After doing the above, don’t make minor modifications to your code and send it to me asking “does this look good?” I don’t know! Compile it and test it! That’s what programming is about: you make a thing, you test the thing, you fix the bugs. Come to me if you’re stuck.