On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 6:12 AM DL Neil <pythonl...@danceswithmice.info> wrote: > > sure you truly understand what is going on. Try to piece together what > > a section of code is doing, step by step. Write down on a piece of > > paper what the variables are at each point in the program. Then, AFTER > > doing the work manually, run the code and see if you were right. > > +1 > > The reason this course caught my attention (and which is relevant to > you, per Chris' and Dennis' recent advice) is that the course revolves > around an 'active textbook'. This intersperses learning material with > mastery exercises, and pertinently, uses a 'widget' which steps through > code, line-by-line, showing exactly what is happening to each variable. > I was impressed!
That sounds like an EXCELLENT way to do the second part - running the code to see if you were right. I would still recommend doing it 100% manually first, *writing down* your expectations, and only *then* letting the computer do it. It's easy to watch the computer do something and go "yes, of course that's what happens", but to still not be able to replicate it yourself. True comprehension means being able to predict what will happen. Consider it like a falsifiable hypothesis in scientific research. "I expect that, when I do X, Y, and Z, the result will be Q." Then you actually perform those steps, and see what the result is. Were you right? If not, how do you modify your expectations/hypothesis to correct it? It's the last step that is the most interesting, because that's where you truly learn. (And sometimes, that learning is expanding the corpus of human knowledge. It's only when you disprove your expectations that you can begin to pin down something like "oh so time flows at different rates depending on gravity" or "huh, so it turns out black-body radiation doesn't behave the way all the math said it would".) ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
