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Ask for help

Programming on your own is fun, but sooner or later you’ll get stuck on a problem. Trust me, I've been coding for 20 years and still get stuck sometimes.
So what do you do when you can't find the answer after re-watching talk-throughs and reading through the documentation? After you've spent a while searching for answers in the usual places, that's a fine time to ask for help from your local friendly community: other Khan Academy coders!
👨🏻‍💻 👩🏾‍💻 👨🏼‍💻👩🏿‍💻 👨🏽‍💻 👨🏿‍💻 👩🏻‍💻 👩🏼‍💻 👨🏾‍💻 👩🏽‍💻
To make it easy for you to ask the community, every program has a "Request help" button on the lower left of the toolbar:
Screenshot of a user program with a toolbar at the bottom and an arrow pointing to the "Request help" button in the lower left of the toolbar.
If your help request is hard to understand, though, the community might not have an answer for you. How can you help your helpers?
First, update your program to help the community understand the code:
  • Add comments to your code to describe what the different parts of your program are meant to do.
// mouth:
fill(87, 24, 24);
ellipse(hopperX + 55, 272, 31, 30);
// glasses:
ellipse(hopperX + 29, 242, 30, 30);
ellipse(hopperX + 80, 242, 30, 30);
arc(hopperX + 55, 242, 20, 16, 180, 360);
  • Make your code easier to read by using descriptive variable names and white space between parts of your code.
var hopperX = 280;
var mouthX = hopperX - 20;

image(getImage("creatures/Hopper-Happy"), hopperX, 205);
ellipse(mouthX, 272, 31, 30);
Then write a help request that the community will love answering:
  • Start the request by describing the issue.
"I want Hopper's glasses to be transparent, so her eyes still show underneath them, but I don't want them completely transparent. How can I make the glasses look tinted?"
  • Be specific, referring to code lines and their corresponding functions when you can.
"The fill command in line 7 does not affect the arc command in line 11. Why is that, and how can I fix it?”
The more effort you put into your help request, the more likely others will be willing to help!
When you do get a response, remember that the best answers are the ones which puts you on the right track, not the ones that do all the work for you.
And finally, as you learn more, don’t forget to check out the help requests to see if you can contribute on the answering side! Even if you don’t know how to solve the problem, you can always learn from the answers that others are giving.
🚸 If your account is a restricted under-13 child account, then you won't be able to submit or answer help requests.

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