How to Prepare for Coding in the Software Engineering HSC

The practical components of HSC Software Engineering trips up a lot of students - not because it's impossibly hard, but because most people don't practise the right way. They read about code instead of writing it, and understand concepts in theory but find it difficult when asked to produce something from scratch under exam conditions.

This post is everything I wish I'd known at the start of Year 11 about how to actually prepare for the practical side of this course.

First, Understand the Course Specifications and Syllabus

The course specifications can be found here.

Before you can prepare effectively, you need to know what you're preparing for. The course specifications combined with the syllabus provide detailed information about programming conventions, such as formatting and what aspects of eacch programming language you will be required to use. This is crucial for the practical exam, where following the correct conventions can earn you marks, and not following them can cost you marks.

Go Through the 2025 Past Paper

Once you are familiar with how programming cconventions, a helpful thing to do is look at the 2025 HSC past paper. This is your single best signal for the depth and style of questions you'll face. The online paper can be found here, and the marking guidelines here. Pay close attention to:

• How many lines of code a question expects you to write
• Whether questions give you partial code to complete, or ask you to write from scratch
• How SQL and Python questions are worded - the verb matters ("write," "identify," "trace" are all different tasks)
• What kinds of problems come up - validation, loops, data retrieval, conditionals

Use the past paper as a tool. Once you know what the exam actually looks like, you can stop over-preparing in some areas and focus your energy where it counts.

Practise, Practise, Practise

There is no shortcut here. The practical parts of the exam tests whether you can produce working code and logic under time pressure. The only way to build that skill is to write code - a lot of it, regularly, over months.

Aim to write something frequently, it doesn't have to be every day but it should be often enough that you stay in practice. Even a short script that uses a while loop and some string methods is good practice, and in the leadup to Trials and the HSC, increase the frequency and the complexity of what you write. The key is to keep the logic fresh in your mind and to build an intuition for how to approach different types of problems,

Use free platforms like Replit, IDLE (comes with Python), or online-python.com so there's zero friction to just opening something and writing.

Use AI to generate practice prompts

With no past papers to drill from, AI becomes your practice question generator. Give it a specific brief and it will produce unlimited exercises at exactly the right level. For example, you might ask:

Give me a Python practice question at HSC level that involves
a while loop, input validation using isdigit(), and a conditional
that checks whether a number is even or odd. Don't give me the answer.

Write the solution yourself first, then ask the AI to review it and point out any issues. This feedback loop is incredibly effective and completely free.

Python: Know Your Built-In Functions

You don't need to memorise hundreds of functions. Focus on the ones that appear in data validation and string processing contexts, because these are the most commonly tested in HSC-style questions.

String methods to know

# Check if a string is all uppercase
"HELLO".isupper()     # True
"Hello".isupper()     # False

# Check if a string is all lowercase
"hello".islower()     # True

# Check if a string contains only digits
"12345".isdigit()     # True
"123a5".isdigit()     # False

# Check if a string contains only letters
"hello".isalpha()     # True
"hello1".isalpha()    # False

# Check if a string contains only letters and digits
"hello1".isalnum()    # True

# Remove leading/trailing whitespace
"  hello  ".strip()   # "hello"

# Split a string into a list
"a,b,c".split(",")    # ["a", "b", "c"]

# Convert to upper or lower case
"hello".upper()       # "HELLO"
"HELLO".lower()       # "hello"

Practise using these inside real programs, not just in isolation. A classic exercise is building an input validator - for example, a program that keeps asking for a password until it meets certain criteria (must contain a digit, must have an uppercase letter, etc.).

Core logic structures to master

Make sure you can write the following from memory without hesitation:

• A while loop that validates user input and only exits when the input is acceptable
• A for loop that iterates over a list and performs an operation on each item
• Nested conditionals (if inside if) to handle multiple conditions
• A function that takes parameters, does something, and returns a value

The HSC uses FOR/NEXT pseudocode syntax for counted loops:

FOR variable = start TO finish STEP increment

        statements

NEXT variable

SQL: Queries and Combining Them

SQL questions in the HSC tend to focus on retrieving and filtering data. Start with the basics and build up to combining queries.

The fundamentals

-- Select all columns from a table
SELECT * FROM students;

-- Select specific columns
SELECT name, grade FROM students;

-- Filter with a condition
SELECT name FROM students WHERE grade > 80;

-- Sort results
SELECT name, grade FROM students ORDER BY grade DESC;

-- Insert a new record
INSERT INTO students (name, grade) VALUES ('Evelyn', 97);

-- Update an existing record
UPDATE students SET grade = 98 WHERE name = 'Evelyn';

-- Delete a record
DELETE FROM students WHERE name = 'Evelyn';

Combining queries with JOIN

Once you're comfortable with single-table queries, practise joining tables together. This is where marks are won and lost.

-- Inner join: returns rows where there's a match in both tables
SELECT students.name, courses.course_name
FROM students
INNER JOIN enrolments ON students.id = enrolments.student_id
INNER JOIN courses ON enrolments.course_id = courses.id;

-- Filter joined results
SELECT students.name, courses.course_name
FROM students
INNER JOIN enrolments ON students.id = enrolments.student_id
INNER JOIN courses ON enrolments.course_id = courses.id
WHERE courses.course_name = 'Software Engineering';

The key to joins is understanding the relationship between tables first. Draw out the tables and their foreign keys on paper before you write the query. Once you can see the structure, the SQL follows naturally.

Shell Scripts

Shell scripting is one of the areas students are least prepared for because it feels unfamiliar. The good news is the depth required is not high - but you do need to be comfortable with the basics.

#!/bin/bash

# Variables
name="Myles"
echo "Hello, $name"

# Conditional
if [ $name == "Myles" ]; then
  echo "Name is correct"
else
  echo "Name is wrong"
fi

# Loop
for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do
  echo "Number: $i"
done

# Reading user input
read -p "Enter your name: " username
echo "Welcome, $username"

Focus on understanding what each line does rather than memorising syntax. The exam is more likely to ask you to read and trace a shell script than to write a complex one from scratch. That said, practising writing small scripts will make reading them much easier.

Algorithm Writing

An algorithm is a precise, step-by-step description of how to solve a problem. In the HSC, you'll often be asked to write an algorithm in pseudocode - a plain-English-like structure that describes logic without worrying about exact syntax.

The most important habit is to slow down and think through the problem before writing anything. Ask yourself:

• What are the inputs?
• What is the expected output?
• What decisions need to be made along the way?
• Are there any steps that need to repeat?

A well-structured pseudocode answer might look like this:

BEGIN
  SET total = 0
  SET count = 0

  WHILE count < 5
    INPUT number
    IF number > 0 THEN
      SET total = total + number
    END IF
    SET count = count + 1
  END WHILE

  OUTPUT total / 5
END

Practise writing algorithms for everyday problems: calculating an average, validating a password, searching a list for a value, sorting items. The logic patterns that appear in these simple problems are the same ones that appear in exam questions.

Flowchart Drawing

Flowcharts are a visual representation of an algorithm, and they are explicitly assessed in this course. You need to know the standard symbols and be able to draw them neatly and correctly.

The most common mistake students make is using the wrong shape for a step. Decisions must always be diamonds with two exit paths labelled Yes and No. Processes must always be rectangles. Getting these right is easy marks.

Practise by taking a pseudocode algorithm you've written and converting it into a flowchart. Then do the reverse - take a flowchart and write the pseudocode or Python equivalent. This back-and-forth builds a strong intuition for how logic flows through a program.

You can use AI here too: describe a simple problem and ask it to give you the pseudocode, then draw the flowchart yourself. Ask the AI to verify your shapes and logic.

Practising Logical Thinking

Underneath all of this - the Python, the SQL, the shell scripts, the flowcharts - is one core skill: logical thinking. The ability to break a problem into clear, ordered steps.

You can practise this away from a screen. When you encounter a real-life process - making a coffee, deciding what to wear, choosing a route home - try mentally describing it as an algorithm. What are the conditions? What are the loops? What's the output?

In your study sessions, always try to solve a problem yourself before looking up the answer or asking AI. The struggle of working through it independently is exactly what builds the logical instinct you need in the exam room, where there's no one to ask.

The practical parts of the HSC exam rewards students who can think clearly under pressure, not students who have memorised syntax. Build the thinking, and your problem solving skills will develop naturally.