Skills

This course will teach the following skills, repeated assessment of which will form the primary source of final grades.

Each skill will be assessed as "Doesn't meet expectations", "Approaching expectations", and "Meets expectations", and students may attempt any skill assessment up to five times (four independently, and once via the bulk assessments, see below), with the best result being used for their grade.

A brief summary of what is expected for "Meets expections" is given below each numbered skill.

1. Design basic functions (Pyret)
   • Type annotations (for basic types -- strings, numbers, images, booleans)
   • Doc strings (concise, not redundant with type annotation, not including unnecessary implementation details)
   • Test cases in where blocks (covering common cases, "edge" cases -- zero and negative numbers, empty strings, etc)
   • Well-formatted implementations -- clear naming for function arguments, no unnecessary if expressions, etc.
2. Construct / Transform Tables (Pyret)
   • Create literal tables in code, and import them from CSVs (stored at URLs and files)
   • Extracting rows and single values from tables
   • Using common table utilities like build-column, filter-with, transform-column to transform tables
   • Use lam for more concise transformations
3. Iteration: Lists (Pyret)
   • Use local mutable variables defined with var, along with for each loops to construct values incrementally, element by element from a list.
4. Structured & Conditional Data (Pyret)
   • Create and use data that has multiple fields, using field projection ("dot" notation) to access fields
   • Correct type annotations for data type, vs. constructor name.
   • Create and use data that has multiple variants, using cases to write code that can do different things depending on the variant.
5. Recursion: Lists (Pyret)
   • Design functions over lists using cases, which recur on the tail in the link case.
6. Recursion: Trees (Pyret)
   • Design trees using data, which have more than one field that refer to the data definition.
   • Design functions over trees using cases, which recur on the self-referential fields.
7. Variable Scope (Pyret & Python)
   • Understand the behavior of variables defined within functions and outside.
   • Understand Python's variable definition and variable update behavior.
   • Understand Python's global syntax, and why and when it is necessary.
8. Design basic functions (Python)
   • Type annotations (for types like strings, numbers, booleans, lists)
   • Doc strings (concise, not redundant with type annotations, not including unnecessary implementation details)
   • Test cases in separate test functions using assert, following pytest conventions (covering common cases, "edge" cases, etc)
   • Well-formatted implementations -- clear naming for function arguments, no unnecessary if statements, etc.
9. Iteration: Lists (Python)
   • Use local variables and for ... in loops to construct values incrementally, element by element from a list.
10. Aliasing & Mutation (Python)
    • Understand the difference between modifying variables and modifying fields of dataclasses or elements of lists.
    • Understand the consequences of having multiple variables pointing to the same data.
11. Identifying Privacy Issues in Problem Formulation
12. Identifying Stakeholders in Problem Formulation

Skill Introduction​

Skills will be introduced in certain weeks (and may be re-inforced in later weeks), via class, recitation, labs, and HW. Each of these will be marked with what skill is being introduced or reinforced by the material.

Skill Assessment​

Assessment of skills can be done at many different opportunities.

Assessable@Hours​

Every week, there will be several special hours held by instructors, course coordinators, or graduate TAs, that exist solely for the purpose of taking assessments. The skills assessable at these hours are those that were introduced the previous several weeks -- see the table below to see what skill is assessable in any given week via this mechanism.

This is intended to allow you several attempts at the skill after the content is introduced, but require you to keep up with the material -- all assessments cannot be deferred to the end of the semester, since only the last few skills can be attempted at the end of the semester.

Skill Days​

Several class days exist as gaps in our schedule, and some of the class may be used to catch up on material, but 30+ mins of class will be used for skill assessments. Instructors will bring a set of assessments -- students are able to attempt any of those available (likely, due to time, 1-2 of them). See the schedule below to see what weeks these occur in, and what skills are assessable during each one.

• Skill Day 1: 1, 2, 11, 12
• Skill Day 2: 3, 4, 5, 11, 12
• Skill Day 3: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Skill Bundles​

Finally, there are two bulk assessment slots, which take place during normal lab time, during the semester. These collectively cover all of the skills for the semester, and students are welcome to attempt all of the assessments available -- every student will be given a packet with a set of assessments when they come to the lab session. If they have already completed a given skill, they can skip that one, and if they have already completed all the skills, they are welcome to skip the bulk assessment entirely. The two bundles are:

• Skill Bundle 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 12
• Skill Bundle 2: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Skill Schedule​