Appendix B — Getting help

We all get stuck sometimes and need some help. Below are some advises on how to help yourself and ask for help:

If you have a question:

• Ask it during the lecture or in the breaks
• Use generative AI (Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, …) as your mentor. It is in general good at giving hints for programming tasks. Note use it as a mentor and not as a giving you the solution. For instance, ask “Given me an example on a Hello world procedure in Python. Explain careful the code
• Google is your friend. This is always the next step. Try searches like “python dfply mask”, “python pandas”, etc.
• About programming errors. First try to understand the error message and solve the problem. Then you may
  • Try to debug your code by inserting print statements in your code or run single lines using cmd+shift+enter.
  • Use a debugger. Further details about debugging can be seen [here][colab-debug-python].
    
• If you can’t find an answer then it is time to ask on-line. I recommend asking a question at stackoverflow. To make your question effective, the idea is to make things as easy as possible for someone to answer. This stack overflow thread How to make a great R reproducible example? give you some good hints. The process of providing a good minimal reproducible example (reprex) often causes you to answer your own question! See also Stack Exchange’s ‘How to ask’ and How to make a reprex at tidyverse.

Note help using mail correspondence is not supported!