💖Rules of Engagement

Our Values

To make the programme productive and pleasant for everyone, we request that everyone abide by the following rules of engagement:

🚀 Punctuality

Please make the effort to be punctual for the sessions, especially in-person ones. This will minimise distractions to others during the session, and show respect to the speakers and facilitators who have put in the time and effort to create the learning experience for you.

✊ Self-help and help others

Coding is best learnt through an experiential process of trial and error and troubleshooting. Some ways you can troubleshoot on your own are to run your code through ChatGPT (or other equivalent LLMs) and try the proposed solutions, or check Stack Overflow, Reddit or Google to see if others have encountered the same problem that was resolved by other contributors.

You can also seek help from other colleagues in your learning group or other learning groups who have coding skills and knowledge to help with troubleshooting.

If your question is not urgent, leave a comment on the FAQ page and wait for it to be answered.

Lastly, if all else fails or if your question is urgent, you can also approach the respective team(s) and/or POCs who have kindly volunteered their time. You can find their details here.

Before you do approach someone else about a problem with your code, please read the following guide on how to ask good questions:

1. Before asking Go through your code line by line and be clear about what each line of code is doing. Check for any typos in syntax, and make sure you have run your code through ChatGPT or Googled the errors.

2. When asking Be specific about what your ask is, with as many details as possible, including what solutions you have tried. You should address questions such as what language, framework, library version, software, operating system and version are you using and experiencing the problem on? Provide relevant code along with your question if possible. Explain the command or steps that led up to you experiencing the problem, and whether the problem was reproducible. Describe what you have tried to fix the problem. e.g. "Would anyone be able to troubleshoot with me why I encountered the error message "unable to connect to server: connection is bad: nodename nor servname provided, or not known" when using Render to deploy my app on a Mac laptop?" is a better question than "My app is not loading, can anyone help me?"

3. After asking Thank the person and do not take it for granted that they are obliged to help you. If your problem is indeed resolved, do close the loop with them (so they can celebrate your successes with you too!). If your problem is not resolved, let them know too, so they can assess if they need to refer you to someone else who might be able to help you instead.

💪 Accountability

This programme was designed for you because the organisation believes in investing in your learning and development. While there are guidelines and deliverables required of you, what you take away from this programme is what you make of it. We highly encourage you to take this month of learning seriously and be accountable for your own learning. If you foresee or are experiencing any situation that may compromise this, please reach out to the organising committee to explore solutions.

TechUp is a full-time programme, and TechUp is mandatory for all DTC officers and management as part of DTC's 100 hours learning initiative.

If you need to be excused on any of the days due to valid reasons, you will need to inform the TechUp team and also seek your director’s approval.

If you have any urgent work to clear during the course of the programme which requires an absence for any of the sessions, you will need to write to DS Feng-Ji ([e-mail]) and your Dir, and copy Ruimin ([e-mail]) and Yunxi ([e-mail]).

If you appear to be doing work during the programme without prior clearance/approval, DS Feng-Ji and your Dir will be notified.