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Getting started (M269)

If you’re an M269 24J student, follow these steps to start writing essays within a few minutes.

These instructions assume you have already created your M269 folder and installed the M269 software.

Copy an essay template

We have created templates to serve as starting points for your essay.

  1. Go to our Jewels and Stones example.
  2. Right-click on the template download button.
  3. Select ‘Download / Save file as…’ and save the template to your M269 folder, with a filename that includes your name (e.g. essay-Michael.ipynb) or that indicates the topic (e.g. balanced-brackets.ipynb). If you prefer, you can rename the file later, when you settled on a topic.

Write the essay

With the essay template in your M269 folder, you can work on it in the same way you do with the book’s chapters and your TMAs.

  1. Open a PowerShell or terminal.
  2. Enter m269-24j to activate your M269 environment and go to your M269 folder.
  3. Enter nb to open the Jupyter dashboard, from which you can open the essay template.

For guidance on writing algorithmic essays see our writing and coding guides.

Share the essay

Once you have a draft you want others to give feedback on, make a post in the VLE forum corresponding to the topic of your essay, and attach your notebook file.

For example, if your essay is about ordered or unordered collections, post it in the Chapters 1-10 forum, but if it also uses recursion or a sorting algorithm, post it in the Chapters 11–20 forum.

Once you have addressed others’ feedback, post the final version of your essay, acknowledging the commenters.

Publish the essay (optional)

If you want to publish your essay outside the M269 forums, you have several options.

  • Ask us in the forum to add your essay to the algoesup GitHub repository, with a link from the example essays page. The copyright of your essay remains with you.
  • Create your own GitHub repository for your notebook file. (Learning how to use GitHub for software development is a valuable professional skill.)
  • Make your essay available via a cloud Jupyter environment, like Cocalc, Colab, Datalore and Deepnote.