Apply Referencing#

The College uses APA Style referencing, and you will be expected to use this with you assignment.

The College has provided you with CiteMaker account. Personally, I use MyBib to keep a record of my sources. Either of these two services will meet your needs.

Start creating you bibliography when you start your project, and then each source when you use it. At the end of the project you can download your bibliography and add it to the end of your documentation.

What to reference#

Make sure that you keep a record of everything that you access to complete your assessments and reference it.

This includes:

  • Books

  • Websites (including this one)

  • Videos

  • Magazines

Opensource Repositories#

The opensource community is a vital part of the IT industry. Python itself is opensource and there is a huge opensource community surrounding it. Using other people’s code, either in the form of Python packages or answers on services such as Stack Overflow is an essential part of being a developer in Python. So how do we reference this?

Python Packages#

If you install and import Python packages this is evident in your import statements within your code. You do not have to cite the package.

However, if you refer to the package documentation, or instructions on the package repository, you need to cite them.

Code from other programmers#

You may incorporate code from other users if you meet the following conditions:

  1. You have adjusted the code to make it yours:

    • Don’t just cut and paste the code from the other user

    • Adjust the code to fit our programming style rules

  2. You understand the code you are using

    • Use in-line commenting to explain how the code works

    • Explain to the teacher how the code works

  3. The source of the code is cited in your reference list.

AI programming assistants#

Unsurprisingly, there are many AI programming assistants available to developers. The complexity of the code they produce is well beyond the scope of this course, and definitely unnecessary to complete our project.

If you choose to use one of these assistant, the need to meet the same conditions as if the code was being produced by other programmer.

Subject matter covered:

  • communicate using language conventions, textual features, such as annotations, paragraphs and sentences, and referencing conventions to convey information to particular audiences about digital solutions [QCAA, 2017]