Suggestions

This unit was very challenging. These are recommendations written by students.

1. Know what format stuff should be in at the start. “Lists inside of lists.” Write everything out.
2. Take a giant chunk of time to plan (1 week). Don’t just do every function in the order it appears in the table.
3. Discuss how to use placeholders for parts that are not complete.
4. Detail what helpers you need. What will your code need to be able to handle? (Teacher + students.)
5. Plan for expression and statement from the very beginning.
6. Big Picture. Understand the overview. Avoid planning for situations that cannot happen. “What is the minimum to get something to work?”
7. (“Ivan’s observation”) Code was redundant, had lots of copy and paste.
8. Advice/Warning. Previous projects are just straight “grind”, but this chapter benefits from more thought.
9. Producing check-expects was as hard as writing the code. People would have errors in their checks as well as their code. Sometimes there would be inconsistencies based on erroneous understandings. Making groups and writing checks first (like the assembler) would be a big plus.