Question:
I’m having trouble writing a good hint. I’m either giving away the solution entirely or writing something so obscure that it’s confusing. Help me!
Answer:
The heuristic that we follow at DataCamp is that a hint should get a student 50% of the way to the solution. We know this is not the easiest task and can take more time than expected for something that seems it should only take a few minutes. Think about the exercise from the student’s perspective; what would they most likely trip over? Is an input a string, but that isn’t super obvious? Remind them it’s a string but don’t give them the formatted input. Sometimes, having them consult the documentation is the best approach; it forces them to find the answer on their own and teaches them how to find the solution. Students can do this directly in the console/shell on DataCamp. Just make sure the package is loaded in their session, or this won't work!
For R courses, use:
?package_name
?function_name
For Python courses, use:
help(package_name)
help(function_name)