Getting help in CS 106A
April 5th, 2020
We provide a variety of support resources in CS106A to help you as much
as possible with assignment, material, or other questions throughout the
quarter. These include: your assigned Section Leader, the LaIR, the
CLaIR, ed, and
weekly office hours held by
Chris and Wil. To help you make the
most of these resources, we've compiled a list of the kinds of common issues or
questions that may come up throughout the quarter, and the best way to
get help for each.
I have a
conceptual question about the course material:
We love conceptual questions. Conceptual questions are the height of all
course queries. It often takes more work to figure out what concept you
are confused about, but if you do that extra work, you will learn much
more in return. You can ask conceptual questions to any course staff.
Go to the LaIR, stop by any office hours, email your Section Leader or
post on Ed!
At the LaIR there is a special sign up for conceptual help called the
CLaIR, or "Conceptual LaIR." This is a higher priority queue and you
will get a faster response. When getting CLaIR help, section leaders
won't look at your code but instead teach you the concepts you need for
your homework. Understand concepts before you code! It will make life
much more pleasant.
I have
a bug in my code, or another question about my
code:
We all get stuck when programming. There are times when the best thing
to do is to work through the bug yourself -- learning by doing is
powerful. However, there are also times when an experienced programmer
can help get you on the right track. Course staff will help you learn
how to narrow down what may be going wrong in your code and how to
approach fixing it.
Go to the LaIR or stop by Wil's office hours
It turns out that code is terribly difficult to debug over email or over
Ed so please attend office hours or the LaIR, if possible.
I have an
administrative question:
Post on Ed if it's not specific to you, or email Wil for
private matters.
Importantly, only the Head TA is able to grant extensions beyond the 4
penalty-free late days you are granted at the start of the quarter
I want to
chat about life and programming / I need to
restrategize:
Anyone on the course staff would appreciate a good conversation about
where this crazy world is headed. If you are interested in more specific
career advice, ideas on how to restrategize your learning, or just want
to talk about life at Stanford, please feel free to join Chris or Wil's office hours.
We have no expectations for students who come to office hours - it's
totally fine to just come with a general sense of confusion or the
desire to work and ask us questions whenever you need to.