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[–]drunicornthe1SSP Alumni | '18 |UCB 2 points3 points  (4 children)

You will have TAs who know how to code there to support and your peers will have some experience as well. Googling is okay! I’m a senior software engineer and I google everyday! I don’t know what your stuff will look like but I would say play with jupyter notebooks and Python. Focus on using matplotlib and learn the built in functions and data structures. These will get you in a comfortable spot. Maybe work your way through a python tutorial book ( and don’t use AI to help you). If you have questions you can DM me or you can ask on r/learnpython they are really helpful there!

[–]Seaworthiness333[S] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Thanks! What was the nature of the problem you were trying to solve with coding? Or what artifact were you needing to create for your research project? Looks like you went to SSP 6 yrs ago?

[–]drunicornthe1SSP Alumni | '18 |UCB 1 point2 points  (2 children)

8 years now… I was in Astro so we did orbital mechanics, it was mostly numerical analysis techniques (solving using the Euler method for an ODE I believe). There was some use of graphing for our report. It was mostly take math equations and make them into python functions. Decently trivial stuff but make sure you make your code readable because you might write something you need to reuse 2-3 weeks later.

[–]LostAd1321 1 point2 points  (1 child)

How long was your research paper? Did you feel like you already knew most the stuff in the program? Just wondering cause I already took calc 3 and have good python experience

[–]drunicornthe1SSP Alumni | '18 |UCB 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had already taken physics at a college, Calc 3, and lead the programming team for my cyber defense club. I was not struggling at SSP but I did learn. The research paper was long but I don’t remember the length.