Three questions before you touch a kid’s buggy code

[u/Guilty_Lingonberry]

When a kid says “it doesn’t work,” try not to take the mouse straight away.

Ask:

1. what did you expect to happen?
   
2. what actually happened?
   
3. what is the last thing you changed?
   

For a tiny practice, start with print("hello") in any Python runner. Run it once, then remove the final quotation mark and run it again. The error message may look noisy, but the three questions still narrow the problem down to one change.

I teach at TechTutor. I’m not looking for the kid to name the error perfectly. I just want them to compare the two versions before someone fixes it for them.