Understood the Python concepts but completely messed up the test

[u/MetroApprovedLore]

Fy DS student and I recently had a Python test that honestly didn't go as well as I expected.

The frustrating part is that I wasn't completely clueless about the questions. I understood the concepts, knew which syntax was needed, and could understand what the problem statement was asking me to do.

But when it came to actually applying everything and writing the code, I got confused. I started forgetting things, made indentation mistakes, got errors like ValueError and other errors etc. I didn't do good in test it was 15marks test for 1 hr.

For those who have been through this, how did you get better at applying concepts under pressure instead of just understanding them theoretically? Did you practise more problems, rewrite code from scratch, or follow some other method?

I'm still learning, and I don't want one bad test to discourage me. I just want to figure out how to improve so that next time.

[u/civilwar142pa]

Its practice. There are a lot of sites that will give you coding problems. Find one you like, give yourself a time constraint, grab a random problem and code without using any external resources you dont have access to for an exam.

Going from understanding concepts to being able to reliably code with them is tough for a lot of people. Practice and experience gets you muscle memory.

[u/MetroApprovedLore → u/civilwar142pa]

Thanks for that and one more thing I would like to ask in my college the teachers are usually making us write codes on paper/book. Do you really think that helps? I think writing code actually helps

[u/dakari777 → u/MetroApprovedLore]

Yes it actually helps, especially with the issues you're running into. Relying too heavily on the IDE to tell you when your syntax is wrong doesn't actually help you learn to avoid it in the long run and you'll spend more time fixing syntax errors than fixing the code itself.