Solo challenges are designed to provide you the opportunity to work on your own and see how confident you are with the learning outcomes.
From the teacher's perspective, solo challenges provide us with an example of your work. We use these to assess how you are doing and give you feedback. We do not expect your code to be perfect; we expect it to show how you work through a problem on your own.
It's okay to refer to your old code and to other parts of the curriculum. You can also use documentation and Google searches, but don't copy and paste code from Stack Overflow or otherwise plagiarize someone else's work. Only write code that you understand and can explain.
Please do not consult anyone (including friends, family, cohort-mates, or DBC staff) for help on any part of the challenge (the one exception is if you need clarification on instructions). This includes office hours.
If you find yourself in a situation where your code is not doing what you expected or want, explain what's going wrong (i.e. what you expected to happen and what's actually happening) in a comment in your file. Then take a break and sleep on it. Don't ever continue to struggle for hours in the hopes you will come to it. You'll be amazed how much better you'll feel after taking a break, and doing so will increase your chances of finding errors. If you can't figure it out, it's better to hand in what you have than to cheat.
It is your responsibility to be able to explain every. single. piece of code and why it's necessary.
You will receive a code review and feedback on some of your solo challenges (we'll link you to a form to submit at the end of the challenge in those cases). Each guide has their own style, but many will focus on what you can do to improve.