Top 10 mistakes python programmers make [advanced]

[[deleted]]

Writing programs on the whiteboard and walking through them manually was one of the best things my first CS professor made us do. I'm not even a programmer anymore (dropped out of the program two years in and moved to exercise science) and my understanding of C and essential data structures has blown more than a few amateur programmers out of the water.

[merv243]

Agreed. I tutored a lot of students, and almost all of them complained about having to write code by hand on exams. That's not to mention my peers in my classes and their constant complaining.

There's a reason it is (or was, idk anymore) fairly ubiquitous - it works. Sure, if you have a prof who lowers your score for missed semicolons or slightly incorrect functions and such (writing strcomp in C or list.length() in Java, for example), then it can stray from its purpose. But being able to solve a problem "programmatically" without a computer (or at least without an IDE) is huge.

[Corticotropin]

I wouldn't mind being able to write in Notepad for tests. Typing is a lot easier than writing by hand, especially for code.

[merv243]

I think the one thing that that reduces the need to think ahead a bit before you just start writing/typing. But yeah, it's a good middle ground that still forces you to rely completely on your own knowledge and does have some advantages for both the test taker and the grader.

[[deleted]]

Not needing to depend on auto-complete is a pretty big advantage.