Assignment Grading Policies

The assignments will stress programming, though there may also be some paper-and-pencil exercises. Programming assignments help drive home key working concepts and principles. Assignments vary in difficulty and may not be equally weighted, though in general they will be 50 points each. Sufficient information about the programming languages you will be using will be provided in class with some reinforcement in the assignment descirptions themselves. There are considerable online resources for those languages, too, on the references page. You do not have to know these languages when you enter the class. You should, however, have some background in an imperative language such as Java, C++, or Pascal.

Each assignment will be worth about 50 points. Partial credit will be given; most of the credit in each assignment will depend on the correctness and elegance of your solution to the problems. Some credit in each assignment (10-20%) will depend on the legibility and commenting of your code --- basically for "good coding style." The following list describes what we expect in terms of coding style:

• Use of indenting and consistent indenting. Choose an indenting style and stick with it. There will be lots of example code to suggest readable styles.


• Variable names should be balanced between easy to use (short) and easy to understand (descriptive). If you like using one-letter names, be sure to comment what they are! (except for idioms like loop indices).


• Use of whitespace. Code without sufficient whitespace to indicate its high-level structure can become very hard to read. Use liberally.


• Header comments. Be sure to have your name, the file name, the date, assignment number, and any other information you feel might be useful at the head of your assignment files.


• Comments. You should comment each function you write with its purpose. If you have created an unusual implementation, you should also indicate how (in addition to what) you've coded. This comment should be before the function itself. Within your code, you should add comments to describe at a high-level what is going on. These inner comments need not be everywhere, but enough should be included to get the general sense of how your code works.

Programs which do not compile will not receive any points. Thus it is always better to submit a compilable partially-correct solution than an ostensibly fully-done solution which does not compile. The best strategy is to progress from a partial, but working, solution toward a final, complete solution by gradually adding features.

Remember, you can always ask about things before you submit your actual product. There is no reason to lose points on most of the above. You also lose no points or esteem for asking.

Course Grading Policies