overview.md



Lecture 06 Overview

"Feedback-nostic" (https://grinch.caltech.edu/diagnostic/cs1/24fa/7a)

As announced on Canvas, today's diagnostic is all about feedback!
We've already gotten some feedback that I want to address:

There's a lot of responses that take on two forms:

"Lecture is too fast and doesn't cover syntax"
"Lecture is too slow and doesn't cover interesting algorithms"


This is actually completely expected for a first programming course!!! Experience is very varied and we're doing our best to make sure everyone is covered and has a good time.
Regardless, we're going to try some things to help everyone:

We have readings! These have always been there (thanks Mike!), but a lot of people didn't know about them.  We will now designate "pre-lecture" readings for each lecture which you can, but do not have to, read to make sure you have the foundational syntax in place before lecture!
Starting with project03, all projects will have "honor roll" problems which are not worth credit but are worth brownie points.
Please go to recitation if you need more help!  The TAs are happy to answer any sorts of syntax questions or things you didn't completely get in lecture there!


More clearly articulated goals for lecture.  (That's what this document is.)


Case Study: Wordle


Introduction to File I/O (Making a list of words from a file) (https://gitlab.caltech.edu/cs1-24fa/lecture-code/-/blob/master/06/words.py)

What is a file?
How do we read files?
get_words() -> list[str]


Introduction to dictionaries

What is a dictionary (or map)?
Why are they useful?
How do we initialize dictionaries in code?
What are some useful syntax for dictionaries?


The "wordle" game (https://gitlab.caltech.edu/cs1-24fa/lecture-code/-/blob/master/06/wordle1.py)

get_wordle_words() -> list[str]
how_many_exact_matches(word1: str, word2: str) -> int
get_counts_of_letters(word: str) -> dict[str, int]
how_many_overall_matches(guess: str, answer: str) -> int