Exercises
Assignment Resources
Procedures
Handouts
Handouts will be distributed on the class web site. Announcements will be posted as "Messages of the Day" on the class website. Very important announcements will be emailed to all students.
Graded Assignments
Graded assignments will generally be returned to you in the review session in the week after they were due.
Exercise Hints
To complete the exercises as efficiently as possible, and to derive the most benefit, we recommend that you:
- Start as early as possible. Elapsed time helps.
- Read the entire text of the assignment before starting any part of it.
- Don't rush to code. You'll find that the more time you spend on design, the less time you spend coding (and much less time debugging).
- Write test cases before you code. This avoids the pitfall of thinking about the code as you write your tests, which could cause you to overlook the same issues in your testing as you did when writing the program. You may want to add additional test cases after writing the code, of course, particularly if implementing the specification brought issues to your attention that you had not been aware of before you started coding.
- Don't debug aimlessly: you'll waste a lot of time and get frustrated. Instead, form a hypothesis and devise an experiment to check it.
- If you're stuck, leave your computer for a while. You may well find that clearing your head allows you to see an obvious problem that you'd missed before because you were focused on the (wrong!) details. When you're tired, stop.
- Make sure that your answers to questions are succinct and to the point.