Saving Your Work is Essential to Success in Lambda School’s Pre-Course
As you begin Lambda School’s pre-course work, it is extremely important that you take steps to properly save all of your homework assignments, projects, code files, and any other work you complete. While the pre-course aims to teach important coding fundamentals, it also evaluates whether students have the discipline and work habits needed to successfully complete the full program. Consistently saving your work in organized folders is a fundamental software development best practice and it will serve you well throughout your coding career. If you fail to save assignments or lose code files, it could negatively impact your ability to complete the pre-course on time. This article will provide best practices and step-by-step instructions for effectively saving all of your pre-course work so that you set yourself up for success at Lambda School.
Version Control and Backups
The best approach is to utilize version control and create backups of your work from the very beginning. This allows you to easily retrieve previous versions of files if needed and protects you from losing code due to computer or software issues. While the pre-course does not require knowledge of version control systems like Git, taking the time to learn the basics will be extremely valuable for your future as a developer.
For the pre-course, I recommend using either Git or an online file storage service like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive to keep backups of your work. With Git, you can initialize a repository on your local machine and regularly commit changes to save all versions locally and optionally to a remote hosting service like GitHub. This protects you even if your computer is damaged or files are accidentally deleted.
Online services like Dropbox work similarly – any files or folders added to your Dropbox folder are automatically synced to the cloud. This provides a second backup if your local files become corrupted. Be sure to configure the services to only sync code/homework related folders so you don’t fill your storage quota with unnecessary files. Either of these options beats only saving to your local hard drive and provides an easy way to retrieve old versions of assignments if needed.
Organizing Folders
Once you have your backups set up, it’s important to thoughtfully organize your file structure. Create a main parent folder like “LambdaSchoolPreCourse” to house all of your work. Within that, use well named sub-folders for each major assignment or project. For example:
LambdaSchoolPreCourse/
Week1Introduction/
Assignment1_VariablesAndDataTypes.js
Assignment2_Functions.js
Week2ControlFlow/
Assignment1_Conditionals.js
Project1_MadLibs/
madlibs.js
text.txt
etc…
Organizing like this keeps related files grouped together and makes it easy to find specific assignments weeks or months later. Name folders and files in a clear, straightforward manner so you always know what a piece of code is even if you take a break from the project. Comment your files liberally to document what each part does to aid future you or anyone else viewing the code.
File Naming Conventions
Speaking of file names, establish a consistent naming convention for all files and stick to it. Best practices include all lowercase with hyphens to separate words for readability. For example:
assignment-1-variables.js
week-2-functions.js
project-1-todo-list.js
Avoid special characters, spaces, or punctuation beyond hyphens/underscores. Keep file extensions lowercase as well (.js vs .JS). This makes files easy to recognize, sort alphabetically, and avoids issues with file systems that don’t support certain symbols in names.
Additional Tips
A few other tips to effectively save your pre-course homework:
Commit/sync changes frequently, especially after completing a new feature or fixing a bug. Don’t wait until the last minute!
Submit assignments through the portal AND save your own copy for records. Don’t rely solely on what’s in your LambdaSchool account.
Back up assignments externally too in case your code hosting service has an outage. A spare thumb drive or cloud backup is fast and cheap insurance.
Organize any additional resources like images, text files, mock data into related folders for each assignment.
Create general “reference” folders to house articles, tutorials or code snippets that helped you for future reference.
Get in the habit of documenting your work with comments, README files and logging progress/learnings along the way.
Scan and back up any hand-written work to your digital folders as well if assignments require it.
Double check folder/file permissions are set correctly if working collaboratively to avoid issues.
Making saving your work a core habit and following best practices ensures you’ll always have access to your progress, submissions and iterations should any issues arise. Beginning Lambda School with strong organizational skills demonstrates commitment and professionalism, setting you up to thrive in the program and launch your coding career. Saving consistently is a fundamental task but critically important – take it seriously from day one!
Properly saving your homework, code and other materials for Lambda School’s pre-course is non-negotiable. Taking the time to thoughtfully organize files, implement version control through backup strategies, and consistently commit changes protects your work and allows smooth tracking of progress. Strong software development habits like those discussed in this article lay the groundwork for success now and in your future as a programmer. Be diligent about file management from the start to conserve time and energy long-term.
Andrew Stroud