#do my python programming assignment homework help

This happened years ago during my freshman year of high school. I went to a newer STEM based charter school and so one of the classes we had was programming. I already had a good understanding of the basics of Python before even taking the class so it was my “easy A” class. Well, being that I was at a new school and have never been the ‘popular girl’ I didn’t want to lean too heavy into the nerd that I ultimately am and instead tried to be cool. In doing so, I started to establish a friendship with the ‘It girl’ of our school. We were talking about programming class and she mentioned how the homework was impossible for her and to kind of try to solidify our friendship, I offered to do it for her. Genuinely, I didn’t mind for a while. It helped me practice things that otherwise I would have forgotten and gave me more excuses to code. Well, after a while, we would only talk to ensure I had done her homework (I guess she didn’t think to just login to check herself?) and that was it. So eventually I started to do her homework less and less until fully stopping. Suddenly, her grade went down and she realized it was because her homework was not being done and when she confronted me about it I was very honest. Now, here’s where the unintentional revenge happened.

I think RTFM has its place. I know I’m not in the minority with this view, but it’s not exactly polite to talk about it. We have all started out on the other side of RTFM at some point, clueless and helpless, not knowing where to begin.

To be quite honest, I wasn’t told to RTFM that much, because I learned to program from books when I was 12, and I wished I could ask somebody for guidance. My father still knew BASIC from the late 70s and early 80s, and my teachers knew enough PASCAL to pass their own exams and then teach children how to use Microsoft Excel. There was nobody to turn to.

When I started learning Java from a book, I was very confused, and I learned many bad habits, idiosyncrasies of the book’s author that I stuck with because I didn’t understand what they meant. Then I bought a bigger, heavier book about Java, and I slowly learned to program. I learned programming in general and Java in particular at the same time. One textbook explained what classes in Java do, but not why you would use them, and the other textbook vacillated between treating OOP as a scary newfangled concept nobody understands but everybody has to use because of Java, and something you have to be familiar with already because the book assumed you already knew C, C++, BASIC and smalltalk.

I read the manual and I didn’t understand. What finally got me to understand OOP was ironically learning and reading code in Python. Unlike in Java and smalltalk, OOP in Python is optional. Although everything in Python is an object, the common Pythonic programming style is procedural, with OOP constructs used sparingly when they make sense. This finally let me understand what OOP is good for. No amount of contrived examples like “class PickUpTruck extends Car { ... }“ helped me understand OOP in Java.

The same thing can happen with classes, module systems, macros, build systems, version control systems, bug trackers, databases, and visual modelling languages like UML and FMC. They are all paradigms or technologies to manage complexity, and if I give a student a toy teaching example of a SQL database, multi-module program, or UML diagram, then the student will be confused rather than enlightened. If the complexity is missing from the example, then the benefit of using complexity-mitigating technology is not obvious.

That even goes for comments! What good are comments in a textbook example, with explanatory text already left and right of the code listing?

If I had a teacher who could explain OOP to me, things would have been so much easier. Eventually, I managed to learn what I needed to learn. Some things are much, much harder to learn if you can’t ask a teacher multiple clarificatory question in quick succession. It would be even better if your teacher asked you a couple of questions to drill down on which part you didn’t understand.

Nowadays, I see many questions on Discord, IRC, and forums from people who are just starting out learning to program. It’s a vast difference between learning Unity3D when you are already a programmer who shipped software in C++ and wrote games in Java, and learning programming, C#, game design, level design, shaders, 3D modelling, and the Unity3D Engine in one go.

If somebody asks a confused question online, the first order of business is to establish whether they are an expert or a confused beginner. That can sound confusing and condescending, but I often fear if I give a straight answer to a confused question, I do more harm than good.

When somebody asks “How do I iterate over the pixels in a pygame surface?“, I can give the straight answer, or three advanced answers with different performance characteristics. You probably want to use numPy and cache the results during level loading. Maybe you can also use numPy if it’s only an occasional thing, and you can stomach the dozens of megabytes of native code dependencies. You probably want to use OpenGL with a GLSL fragment shader if you do the thing every frame. If perchance you want to do palette-swaps only, then you can use the pygame palette handing functions rather than iterating over pixels and doing a dict look-up each time. Iterating over all the pixels in a pygame surface is slow. You can probably get away with it on a 16x16 sprite, but not on a 1920x1080 screenshot.

That’s not even the worst of it! I see confused questions by people who think they found a bug in a library/framework/engine, but actually they just don’t understand their own code, or they don’t understand the programming language. I see confused questions by people who don’t know what problem they are actually encountering, who don’t know what to Google.

These people don’t need to be told to RTFM. Either they already read the manual, but they don’t understand it, or they don’t even know which manual, or what to look for. They can’t be told to RTFM, but they can’t be given straight answers either. The best thing you can do is to ask “You’re new to this, aren’t you?“ and point them to a more basic tutorial. Or, if your time is worthless, you can decide to tutor them one-on-one over the Internet.

All these problems can combine into the worst possible scenario: Somebody asks on StackOverflow/IRC/the mailing list/Slack/Discord, because their teacher is not available, or told them to learn to RTFM and figure it out independently. These people can be high school students too intimidated by their teachers to ask questions, university students who can’t be bothered to attend lectures or wait for office hours, or junior programmers who are trying to impress their boss.

Figuring things out is a useful skill to have, but it’s not something you should rely on in a high school class. If you’re a teacher, don’t punish students for asking questions! And don’t expect students to bother strangers on the Internet to do your job for you. The best thing you can do to get students to RTFM is to answer their questions when they get stuck, so they get a good idea of what to look for, which terms to search for, what to ask on IRC.

If you want to teach your pupils to RTFM, you should at least follow up with them and point them in the right direction in case they get stuck trying to look up the answer, or if they don’t understand the text in the manual. Of course you can assign reading, but for some reason, some of your pupils will take this to mean that you refuse to explain the topic, so the only recourse is to ask strangers online.

And then the student comes back next week and asks even more confused questions, now that the next assignment is due, impossible to complete without having understood last week’s topic.

Around a third of confused newbie questions I see are from students who would rather not ask their teachers, not even those who post whole homework assignments.

Some people want us to stop saying RTFM online, ever. They also want us to stop saying “You’re new to this, aren’t you?“ or “Please take a step back and think about what you are trying to accomplish with this“. They all are too condescending. I’m not just trying to shift the blame away from open source projects and programmer online communities. Confused online questions sometimes have offline causes. These causes cannot be hyperlinked, retroactively screenshotted, and posted to twitter.

I have tried every single app listed here, for at least a short time. Some of which I use on a regular basis, while others I just tried because I wanted to have twenty different apps on this list, or because there are five choices that do the exact same thing so I only use my favorite. Anyways here we go towards the list of 20, and if any of you are interested in singular reviews on any of these apps, just ask, because I have nothing but time and would be happy to help. Also tell me what you want next. I mean it could be the part two (as one would be easy to make with the amount of apps there are, I've not even really touched the tip of the iceburg), or another certain type of post, whether it be studying tips, a website version of this, or a recommended list of classics to read.

Homework/Studying Apps:

1. Quizlet - A studying app/website with flashcards, games, quizzes, and tests. Useful for learning languages, vocab, and terms, but also has other features such as diagrams. It's one of the mobile studying apps of it's type, though it doesn't have all the features the actual website provide.

2. Cram.com Flashcards - Another studying app like Quizlet, though unlike the mobile version of quizlet it has more games than just match, and just different features and set up.

3. Kahoot - A quiz app focused on the younger audience, as it's played like a game more than studying. You have options between playing live games with a host, a challenge between multiple players, or a single player practice.

4. Khan Academy - A learning app that lets you learn anything it offers for free of charge, there are math courses that range from early math to AP Calculus to Linear Algebra, along with Science, Economics, Arts and Humanities, Test Prep, and more.

5. Photomath - A "camera calculator" that brags to be the smartest one on the market, you can take photos of your math equations or type them in and you will receive the answer and step-by-step instructions on how to get that answer.

6. Duolingo - Probably the best app for learning a language die there being so many choices including English, French, German, Italian, Romanian, Greek, Polish, Swahili, and more. You can learn as many of these languages as you want at once, and there are multiple choices for native languages, so you can learn French even if you're just say fluent in Spanish. There are also groups that you can join in-app.

Planner/Checklist Apps:

7. School Planner - There are multiple on the market, though the one being mentioned is by Andrea Dal Cin. It has tabs for a calendar, an agenda, a timetable, grades, subjects, teachers, attendance, and recordings. That and a complete overview for the day and week.

8. School - This exact application is by Flaring App, and it offers tabs for schedules, homework, handbook (It's actually formulas for math, physics, chemistry, and information about countries), time to end (which is a time table), books, people (sorted into teachers and friends contacts), trigonometry, and notes.

9. Egenda - Another planner/organization type app that has two main tabs, what's due and completed, and then customizable class tabs where you're assignments can be sorted by class.

10. Study Planner - As the name suggests this app is a planner and organization app. It includes side tabs for a dashboard, agenda, calendar, class schedule, study time, subjects, and teachers.

Communication Apps:

11. Remind - A school communication platform that allows you to talk to the class, a group, or an individual. Allows you to be in multiple class's and/or club's groups, it translates messages, and you are also able to share photos and flyers.

Learning/Courses Apps:

12. Coursera - An app filled with online courses in programming, math, music, languages, business, and more from some of the top universities. It seems to be the one with the most courses or at least out of the ones I've found. Ever course I've found so far has been free, though certification usually isn't.

13. Stepik - Another online course app, with free courses, though the amount of courses on this app are very limited with less than a dozen available mostly focusing on coding and English.

14. Edex - Another online course app, with courses offered by top universities, and like Coursera it mostly has free courses with paid certification. It has a good amount of high level STEM classes, business classes, law classes, and architect type classes. It also has high school courses such as introduction to algebra and introduction to geometry, which are both actually currently going on.

15. TubeStudy - Just another course app, although this one you learn through videos, most of which seem to be free. Videos cover a large variety of topics all the way from Chess to Geometry to Python to German.

Etc. Apps:

16. Libby - An app I recommend if you have a library card, as it links to your local libraries ebooks and audiobooks, letting you check them out and then leaving automatically when you time runs out.

17. All Formulas - An app that offers a list of math, Physics, and Chemistry formulas though the list is limited and certain formulas are missing such as the equation of a circle.

18. Math Formulas Pack - Another app that offers a list of math formulas, the set up is a little simpler than the appearance of all formulas, but unlike like it, it only has math formulas. It seems to have more math formulas than the other, though I haven't checked. Also like most realistic apps, it is missing formulas.

19. Career Guide - While not exactly a school app, it has it's relations definetely for those who are trying to see just how many jobs are out there. It's probably one of the best apps I've found out there when it comes to selection and information, though I've found, and had to use, websites that offer a lot more information. (Though I have to say certain aspects of the site are based around the careers in India, including the monetary aspect.)

Depending on where you’re going and what type of program you’re in, you may or may not be learning a lot of new languages and frameworks. My experience in school was a BS program in computer science at a large research school, so it tended more toward the algorithm/theory side of things. The only languages I really picked up were java, C, and C#. Everything else I learned was through internships.

As for studying theory, you can kind of approach it like any other science or math class. For stuff like foundations or higher math, doing practice problems can help a lot. For applied algorithm classes like AI or networking, implementing algorithms can really help with learning them. (If you know any python, it’s great for this. You’re basically programming in pseudo-code). Usually they’ll give you labs or homework for that kind of stuff. In almost any class, your best bet for studying for exams will be to practice labs and homework. If something in there or in the slides is unclear, definitely reach out to the professor or go to office hours.

If you’re in a more “programming” heavy program (like maybe a trade school or a code bootcamp), you’re going to given assignments that help you learn your way around whatever tools they’re trying to teach you. The hardest part about learning any language or framework is applying those smaller exercises and using them to build a production-scale application. It’s not easy to go from “hello world” on codecademy to writing an entire webapp. Depending on what they give you, you might want to think of (or google) ideas for larger projects to really cement what you’re learning. For example, to help me with learning ReactJs on my own I started to write a browser version of minesweeper. “Started” meaning I never finished becase my ADD ass can’t finish anything