1. This course is one of the hardest in this department. We will be covering large amounts of completely new material every single week. You will not be able to keep up if you let yourself fall behind for even one or two weeks.
2. If you are not getting perfect or near-perfect scores on the quizzes, you should be worried, because the quizzes are designed to be dead simple and trivial.
3. If you are starting the homework one or two days before it is due, you are not going to be able to keep up. If you are finding yourself lining up and waiting a half hour for consultants to help you because of the line, you need to start on the homework earlier. Remember, we do not accept late homeworks.
The best place to get general help is the uwash.class.cse143.bboard newsgroup. All the TAs read the newsgroup, and all students should as well. Any questions are allowed, except posting large portions of your own code (2-3 lines is okay, however).
The consultants' role is to help you with your homework in the labs. You should have a specific question prepared for the consultant before (s)he reaches your desk. The consultant will give you 5 minutes and move on if there are other people in line. Consultants are not for the following:
Teaching assistants are your primary point of contact. You can ask your TA (or any other TA) whatever you want. In the interest of making this contact productive, make sure you've read the homework assignments and lecture slides, and try to come with specific questions.
You can also ask the lecturer (Martin) whatever you want, but keep in mind that there's 125 enrolled students and only one lecturer so time might be tight.
Copying of code in any way, shape, or form is not allowed, except when TAs or consultants help you with your homework.
Every one of the TAs reads code better than most of you read English. This is not an exaggeration. In addition, we run all the homework submissions through analysis software that is more sophisticated than you can even comprehend at this stage in your computer science careers. Academic dishonesty will be treated with extreme intolerance.