Skip to content

Add common errors page #188

@pdarragh

Description

@pdarragh

Similar to #185, a new page should perhaps be added that explains common error messages students may encounter in this class. It used to be the case that we could expect students to do some legwork in deciphering error messages on their own, but the modern student appears particularly ill-prepared for such tasks. On the one hand, we would like them to get better at this and be able to expect as much of them; on the other hand, they seem to just not have developed this skill and constantly submit Piazza posts with simple questions that could be answered by addressing these issues somewhere in advance, at least to a small degree.

Some common issues we might address on a new page:

  • Installation/set-up issues
    • Apple Silicon Racket (e.g., fasl-read error)
    • Racket installed but not found
    • nasm not installed
  • Racket issues
    • ?: literal data is not allowed — typically due to using Racket's compile by mistake
    • Identifier not bound
    • "Not a procedure"
  • a86 issues
    • Duplicate label
    • Undeclared label
    • Hyphenated label names
    • Bad instruction operand
  • Gradescope issues
    • Out-of-memory
    • Time-out
    • That GRacket error when students somehow convert a file to 3-D syntax

I wonder if we could support collapsible sections. If so, then each issue could have a brief description and then an expandable sub-section that shows a specific example, and perhaps walks through the thought process of how to debug it. While many students seem not to care too much about this, a good portion of them do still prefer to learn these skills when confronted with their lack of experience with them, so it might be worth doing.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    enhancementNew feature or request

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions