I have a Python exam in about two weeks, and many of the questions are expected to be similar to the exercises on CodingBat. I only know the basics so far and would really appreciate advice on how to work through the problems effectively and actually understand the concepts instead of just copying solutions. What study approach would you recommend?
3 Answers
Try to take an active approach: spend some time solving each problem before looking for help. Even if your first attempt is wrong, debugging it and understanding why it failed will teach you much more than following someone else's solution from the start.
One really useful skill is learning to use a step-through debugger. It lets you run your code one line at a time and inspect how variables change, which can make confusing problems much easier to understand.
I haven't used a debugger before, but I'll look into how it works.
Start by working through the exercises yourself and focus on specific problems where you get stuck. A general request for help is difficult to answer, but sharing the code, your attempted solution, and what you expected it to do will make it much easier for someone to explain the issue.
That makes sense. I'll begin with the exercises and ask about particular problems when I can't figure them out.
Thanks, I'll try solving them on my own first and use questions to clarify the parts I don't understand.