An AP Comp Sci homework helper
CodeHS has gaps. This is made to fill those in.
For students who naturally understand computer science, CodeHS is great! Not all of us are like that, though. Some assignments are hard to understand no matter what. If you don't get the right solution on the first try, it is hard to ever arrive at the right solution. Weird hacks can help you, but those don't better your understanding of coding.
CodeHS is a for-profit site, so they'll design for their customers: the teachers. They do a wonderful job and it's an incredible site, but some features sacrifice student experience1 in favor of the teachers.
This was designed to be something easier and better for students.
It started off simply giving solutions, just like other projects. Sometimes, that's what someone needs in order to understand the concepts-- especially when faced with vague instructions.
I thought we could do better by adding explanations in hover tips, letting people know what the variables & syntax constructs were.
Though he had known of the project, my teacher then made us shut it down when told how popular it had gotten.
I petitioned him, asking for permission to restore it with more obvious and obtrusive explanations. As shown by the 500 students who have joined the Discord server requesting help after this resource was taken away, DCT is a website that can help people. Especially during virtual education, students are getting less support from their teachers, so we will naturally help each other.
I'm working to get this website back up in a TOS-compliant manner. In the meantime, I'm working with community members to add other courses to the site, creating contribution tools & guidelines, and improving the site. Don't worry, it's not dead. Just sleeping 😄
In the Meantime
- Connect on Discord - get help from other students
- Can't use Discord? You can also ask for help through email (may have longer response time)
1 Image credit: @Lab via Discord. I know that teachers can disable copy/paste prevention for specific exercises. It seems like many don't know this or don't bother, though