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← RoadmapDay 3 of 90Foundations2h 10m

Conditions, loops, and the shape of logic

By the end of today you can read a nested block of conditions and loops and say exactly which lines run for a given input, and you can flatten a deeply nested block into something a person can follow.

YesterdayOn Day 2 you learned that names point at values. Today those values start deciding what your program does next.

TomorrowTomorrow you wrap this logic into functions, so it can be named, reused, and tested.

01

Why this matters

Control flow is where most logic bugs live. Being able to trace which branch executes, without running the code, is the skill that separates guessing from debugging.

  • Conditionals
  • Loops
  • Truthiness
  • Tracing control flow
02

Learn it

70 min

Copy this into Claude or ChatGPT. It quizzes you before it explains anything, which is deliberate. The resources under it are how you check what it told you.

Today's Master Prompt

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A prompt written for this day alone: your level, the exact scope, what to leave out, and an instruction to quiz you before it explains anything. Paste it into Claude or ChatGPT and it teaches you today's material.

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Check it against something that is not a model

An assistant can be fluent and wrong, and on a topic you met today you will not catch it. These cover the same ground and were made by people who do this for a living, so they are what you hold the explanation up against. They are other people's work and we only link to them, so judge them for yourself.

3 hand-picked resources

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Videos, official docs and articles covering the same ground, each opened and annotated by hand. They are what you check the assistant against on a day you cannot yet catch it being wrong.

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03

Build it

40 min

Write a function with at least three nested if statements that decides whether an order qualifies for free shipping. Get it working. Then rewrite it using guard clauses so nothing is nested more than one level deep, and confirm both versions agree on at least five different inputs.

04

Recall it

20 min

Answer out loud, reveal, then mark honestly whether you had it. That score is the only thing on this page you do not get to choose.

4 recall questions

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Questions you answer from memory, then grade yourself against the real answer. The score is carried into the mastery rating below it, so an honest miss cannot quietly become a tick.

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05

Rate it

Completion and mastery are tracked separately. Be honest, because an inflated rating only means the concept resurfaces sooner.

Mastery tracking

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Rate yourself against five named criteria per concept. Completion and mastery are tracked separately, and anything you rate shakily comes back automatically on a spaced schedule.

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06

Recap

  • 01Conditions are evaluated in order, and the first match wins
  • 02Empty containers and zero are falsy, which is convenient and occasionally a trap
  • 03`and` and `or` return an operand, not a boolean
  • 04Guard clauses flatten nesting by handling the exception first

Your progress

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Mark days complete, pick up where you left off across devices, and watch completion and mastery diverge. Free, and the account exists only so ninety days of work cannot vanish with a cleared browser.

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