All About Homework

Please do not leave assignments for the last minute. The assignments are non-trivial and will require significant effort. Please take the time to design your programs carefully. More programming problems arise from improper design than anything else, and the time you spend on design will be amply repaid by shorter coding and debugging phases. So please think the design and interfaces through, and—as always—try to find the simplest way to do the assignment (within the limits given in the assignment, of course)!

All homework is due at noon on the due date, unless noted otherwise on the assignment. When you turn in an assignment, you must turn in four sections, each in a separate file (or files):

1. The program itself, suitably commented; this may be in multiple files.
2. The refinement of the program, from the assignment to the pseudocode from which you wrote the program. Call this file “refine.txt” or “refine.pdf”.
3. A journal of errors found along with their remedies. Call this file “journal.txt” or “journal.pdf”.

We do not mind being asked for help; indeed, we welcome it because it helps us know what students are finding difficult or confusing, and sometimes a few words about the problem in class will clarify the assignment immensely. When you come to us, or send us a note, asking for help, please show us whatever you have done to solve the problem, because the first question we will ask you is “What have you tried?” We don’t think you’re wasting our time. We ask because understanding how you have tried to solve the problem will help us figure out exactly what your difficulty is and what we can do to help you. We'’ll do everything we can to avoid solving the problem for you. When we give you help, our goal is to help you solve the problem yourself.

When we grade your programming exercise, we will use approximately the following weighting:

Design of program, including refinement	20%
Correctness, clarity of output	40%
Style (names, use of white space, commenting)	20%
Journal of errors	20%

We will vary these weights as needed. Please note that correctness is not enough for a perfect score.

Late homework will be accepted only with a doctor’s excuse.

If you feel that there is an error in grading, please come see me or the TA and we’ll look over it (and possibly talk with you about it). However, don’t dally; any such request must be made within one week of when the grades were made available. After that, we won’t change your grade.

ECS 10, Basic Concepts of Computing Winter Quarter 2012