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Asking questions on the Discussion Board

Asking questions on the Discussion Board on Canvas is very important for your and others’ success in this class. Here’s how to do it best.

1. Post a question if you are stuck for ~15 minutes.
2. When asking the question:
   1. Describe exactly the steps you have taken. Try to be clear, e.g. refer to things with specific nouns rather than “it”.
   2. Describe exactly what unexpected behavior you are observing.
   3. Post screenshots!

Scenario

You are trying to run a program which is supposed to print out a sentence, but you aren’t seeing the sentence printed out.

Try to:

• Post something along the lines: “I have my terminal open on my Mac. I am in my home directory. I am typing: python myprogram.py but what I am observing is the following error message: python: can't open file 'myprogram.py': [Errno 2] No such file or directory.

Avoid:

• Posting something along the lines: “I am trying to run my python program but it doesn’t work”.

We need to know exactly what you are doing (not just conceptually, but technically: in what environment you are working (terminal or IDE, etc.), which operating system you are using, which exact action you are performing (e.g. which exact command you are typing), and what exact behavior you are observing (e.g. a complete and specific error message), in order to be able to help.

It doesn’t work is frustrating but it is uninformative!

Finally, remember that others will benefit from you posting the question!

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