Use your head to think!

The motto of our course is Use your head to think!

This means that you have to think all the time when working on the course. You need to think about how to solve certain problems, how to do a lot of other things. You will not have universal recipes that will allow you to solve all the problems — on the contrary, the best, most interesting problems are those where you are required to come up with something.

Moreover, you should always be critical of any information you receive, of anything that is written in textbooks, of anything I tell you or that is written on the course page. Think, try to understand why it is written, why you are advised to do so, and not otherwise. In textbooks, in what other people tell you, and even more so in my materials and advice, there can easily be mistakes, typos, and finally, you may find easier ways to achieve the same — so never take for granted what you read somewhere, always think about and reflect on the information received. It may turn out that in one source you read one information, and in another source something absolutely opposite — think, experiment (see below), and understand how to do better.

Also, don't be afraid to experiment! If you are not sure if something is possible in python/c++/etc., if it ok to write this or that command, whether it will work as you expect — try it: write and check. If you don't remember exactly how to write a command, try several options until you succeed. If you have read completely different information about how to do something in different places, try it and check which method works! Don't be afraid to try, don't be afraid to experiment — this way you will learn a lot more than if you just strictly follow what is written in any textbooks or what someone (even me) told you.