I would like to see a lesson added to Unit 2 that explains the importance of clean code, whitespace, indentation, comments, and good naming conventions. I know that it is occasionally mentioned here and there, and it certainly MODELS good use of comments on some levels along the way. But I think it needs to be more explicitly taught. Students don’t always understand the reason why they’re needed or who they’re meant for. When asked to add comments, their choices are often not actually helpful or explanatory. When they go to name classes, they don’t choose good names. Let’s teach them about camelCase or something. I keep trying to explain that it’s hard for someone to help them debug when everything is called container1, container2, etc, and instead of something more descriptive. Sometimes they choose names that don’t even make sense, like “skibidi” or “fortnite”. They also really don’t understand when to indent.
Hi @katherine_copanic ,
I have this discussion often with my students. There is not an explicit lesson; however, I do want to point out (and you may already know) that the mini-less rubric is assessing much of what you mentioned:
Clean Code and Documentation - Readability
They use white space and indentation to make code consistently well formatted, with nested tags aligned vertically to make them easier to read.
Clean Code and Documentation - Comments
Comments are used throughout the page to make their code more readable.
In my class, we have a discussion about who the audience is for reading the comments and what type of information would be most useful in the comments based on the audience. We also discuss what is required to earn an “extensive evidence”.
If you feel like a lesson should be added, the best way to let the creators know is to complete this form and choose “I’d like to request a feature”. They truly use this feedback when the review the curriculum each year.
~Michelle