Advice for Ruby Programming Foundations Written Assessment(Part 1)

In this article I will give you my own advice for the Ruby Programming Foundations Written Assessment in Launch School and I will also try to provide you with some tips on how to explain your code and maybe what certain concepts mean.

Before I go any further, I have to say that the study guide for this assessment is great. Make sure to reread all the material that is mentioned in it several times, especially variables as pointers and these three blog posts 1, 2, 3. Also, if you have time, try to attend one of the study groups. You can find more information about them in Launch School Forum.

Now let’s start with the fun part…

Non-technical part of assessment

1. Make sure to use markdown. And if you’ve never heard before what markdown is, like I hadn’t, it simple syntax that is used to style writing on the web. For this assessment the only one that you will need are backticks(``). You can find them usually left to the number 1 on the keyboard. They are used to style code sections that fit to one line. Press backtick, enter some word or code you want to style, and then press backtick again to end. You will use them to mark method names like greeting , variable names a , lines that you are referring to line 1 and so on.
2. Make sure to divide your answers into paragraphs. An answer that looks like one long paragraph is much harder to read and you will lose non-technical points because of that.
3. Pay close attention to what each question is asking and keep your answers concise. For example, if the question is to explain how variable shadowing affects given code, then you should simply describe how variable shadowing is demonstrated in the code and what affect it has, with as much precision as possible.

In the remainder part of this series, I will review some of the key concepts you should master while preparing for the assessment.

Continue to part 2…