Is it well-received to thank the assignment author at the end of a course? Institutional Background
I'm currently taking a programming course as part of my computer science studies at a rather small German university.
The course is done by the professor, who's holding the lecture, and three assistants who do the lab with us, prepare / correct the assignments and update and maintain the sample code base / documentation.
Actual question background
Now I've liked the assignments a lot and even posted them on CodeGolf.SE (after the assignments expired) after having obtained permission from my professor. They have done quite well over there (usually a lot of answers, upvotes and views). To be clear: The assignments were not &quot;good&quot; in the sense that they were trivial or easy, they just required an appropriate understanding of the materials and were quite enjoyable to do.
Because I and apparently others have enjoyed these assignments, or the ideas behind them, so much, I'd link to thank the author of the assignments in a nice email with links to the relevant CodeGolf posts.
As an inexperienced student I don't know whether it would be awkward for him to get such a &quot;thanks&quot; for &quot;just getting his job done&quot;.
Is it generally considered appropriate / acceptable to thank members of the team besides the primary instructor for a good and enjoyable course experience, like good assignments)?
As for the relation between the assignment author and me: We had near to no interaction except him pushing the new assignments into everybody's SVN folders and then correcting all solutions, usually without many comments, after the students have pushed them back into the repository.
To distinguish this question from &quot;Is it appropriate to send an email to a professor at the end of the semester thanking them for their teaching?&quot;: To my knowledge, the assignment author has no authority whatsoever about my grade and I already have my qualification for the exam and I've never met / seen him in person.
Yes, I think it would be fine. Everybody likes to know their work is appreciated. Teaching assistants are often not appreciated enough  by their students (and sometimes not enough by their professors!).

Just a short concise form of thanks would be enough:


  Thanks for those exercises you set for course xyz. They were really interesting, and I enjoyed solving them. I hope you liked creating them as much as I appreciated their contents.


Something along those lines perhaps. If you make it too long it might sound obsequious or sycophantic.