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This is primarily a course on problem solving, algorithms and data representation. You cannot learn problem solving by simply using solutions produced by other people. Accordingly, this is a do-it-yourself course. You will need to work things out on your own.
Some courses concentrate on how to use libraries containing a lot of prewritten stuff. This is not one of those courses. If you learn to program by relying on libraries, you find yourself at a loss for how to proceed if a library does not provide exactly what you need. On the other hand, after learning how to do things yourself, it is easy to learn how to use a library where someone else has done some of the work for you.
Here is a true anecdote.
I once had a student
doing some programming work for me. I asked him to write a
small module to carry out a clearly specified task. A week later,
he came back to me and said that he had scoured the library
and could not find a tool that performed that task. He
suggested that we wait for the next release of the library,
since that release might have the tool that I asked him to create.
Really! I sent him away to do it himself.
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