As mentioned in my previous post, I was really hesitant to use this feature as it felt embarrassing to have my uncertainties out in the open for everyone else to see. After spending upwards of 2 days wrestling with the issue however, and reviewing my code multiple times, I gave myself one last pass before I relented. It only took the help coach about 10 minutes to figure out what the issue was. To my surprise, and consternation, I learned that following the example directly was a mistake.
Thanks to that first experience, I not only learned something new about the program (both about the examples and about the way the tests work), but also something about the way the language itself works. I’m glad that I relented and learned these lessons because things were relatively smooth sailing until then and though it took until the Tic Tac Toe Game Status lab to run into such an intractable issue, I’m sure that it would have been worse had it come up later.
I also came to an agreement with myself. Though I can be incredibly stubborn about figuring things out myself, if I end up spending more than a day or two on any specific issue, then I would utilize the feature again. This way I don’t spend time getting unnecessarily frustrated and again start to doubt my own capabilities. The Ask a Question feature is definitely worthwhile and the coaches (I’ve used the feature a grand total of 3 times to date) are all pretty nice despite the time crunch of 20 minute screenshares (which can admittedly get a bit frustrating when the time limit means getting bounced around between different coaches if the issue isn’t solved right away!).