This document serves as an Unofficial supplementary information document for the Computer science project. This does not override the information on the official website and any unofficial scripts and information will not be valid to acquire additional marks. To clarify, if your project works after following the information and scripts contained here but does not work with the official scrips, you will not be granted the marks.
Sunlearn has a lot of information on it that will help you figure out a solution to almost anything project related. Following this link to the sunlearn page will give you access to the videos available on the platform which detail many important aspects covered by the lectures. The information about the project on SunLearn is available here.
The CS documentation website and team provide a lot of detail on the expectation of the project. Please take the time to read through the website and check if your question has already been asked on the team. A lot of effort is constantly being put in to maintain these platforms and keep them as informative as possible. They are constantly updated with the most relevant information on the project. Please avoid reaching out to the lecturers on a personal scale as it creates unnecessary inbox spam for them and prevents future students from finding out the answers to similar questions.
Access the Microsoft Team here.
Access the CS documentation site here.
When in doubt Google it. Chances are someone out there had the same question and someone else answered it. Sites like StackOverflow are valuable especially when you have issues with your syntax or errors. Be specific in your question and you'll be surprised at what you can find.
I suggest that you look at the video on Sun Learn and read through the CS project website. They contain critical information that make understanding and working on the project a lot more simple. There is also a page for tips for beginners on the CS project website. You'll definitely want to check those out before moving on to the first phase: planning.
Set out some time to start planning your project. Think about what kind of data types you might use (String, int, boolean, etc.) and how you will structure your code. Take the time to plan your program and think about how it will run, as this will save you time in the long run. You won't be left wondering if you've missed something or if it's done correctly. Set yourself some simple but achievable goals and write them down somewhere, then when you complete a task you can tick it off and realise that you are in fact making progress. This will make the end goal feel more attainable. Once you've finished your planning you can move onto getting some code down. Here's how to start.
I recommend you follow the same progression that someone using the program would follow (The game play progression can be found here). The first thing you might want to tackle is the command line argument validation. The website details exactly how they are expected to be formatted. You might then want to move on to getting move input or setting up your game board, etc. This will make getting started very easy and not leave you confused wondering "Where do I start this thing?" Then continue with the progression of the program and implement the next feature. Follow this pattern of implementing what the user would do next and checking things off your checklist and you'll never get stuck not knowing what to do next.
You are required to use the StdIn and StdOut libraries for your project, luckily they are super easy to use. The StdIn and StdOut (click on the names to go to the docs) libraries follow a very simple syntax. To display text using StdOut is as simple as StdOut.print() or StdOut.println(). And getting an input is not much more difficult, you use StdIn.read____() where the ____ is the data type. For example StdIn.readInt() will return an integer.
See Sun Learn as a resource, The official CS documentation and Google for more details on those. The mentor sessions are highly valuable as they aim to teach those who are inexperienced how to code and good programming practices. The demi's are also a great resource that has been made available to you.
My GitHub page has many additional resources and more are being added all of the time. All unofficial documents created by me will be available on this page in their most up to date form. Just reach out to me if you have a specific question and I'll be happy to help. I also offer help to students to the best of my abilities within the appropriate restrictions as laid out by the lecturers. For details on how to reach me see Contacting me.
Reach out to your reps and they will be able to put you in contact with me if you need to Whatsapp me (~Kirbs). You can reach me via my email 25853805@sun.ac.za (D Kirby). I will try my best to get back to you as soon as possible. Any useful information will be relayed to the groups and posted on my GitHub page.