This course asks you to break things, be confused in public, and eventually knock on a stranger’s door to ask about their week. That takes norms — and they bind everyone in the room, including your teacher.
The core agreement
Nobody’s half-working program gets laughed at. Every program you have ever admired was a broken program first, usually hundreds of times.
What we agree to
- Predict before you run. Saying out loud what code will do — and being wrong — is the fastest way to learn to read it.
- Bugs are information. An error message is the computer being as helpful as it knows how to be. We read it before we groan at it; see Mistakes Are Data.
- Drivers swap. In pair work the keyboard changes hands on the timer, every time, with no exceptions for “but I am faster”.
- Your accounts are yours; theirs are theirs. Nobody uses a machine somebody else is signed into, and you lock your screen when you step away.
- Honest about help. A classmate’s idea, a forum answer, an AI assistant’s suggestion — all fine WHEN NAMED, in a comment, the way Writing Code Others Can Read shows. Passing off borrowed or generated work as your own thinking is the one unforgivable bug.
- Clients are people, not props. When you interview someone, you arrive on time, you ask permission before using their name, and you do not disappear halfway through the project. Their information stays private unless they say otherwise — Interviewing Your Client spells this out.
- We argue with ideas, never at people. That governs every page in Discussions, especially the uncomfortable ones.
Why this is not just being nice
A room that shares half-broken programs learns faster, because problems get found while they are still cheap to fix. That is precisely how professional software teams work. None of the above is a school rule with a technology coat of paint; they are the working norms of the field, learned early.
- Read this page with a parent or guardian.
- Bring one norm you would add — we finish the list together in the first week, and it stays linked from every task.