The Assignments

• PA1: Boggle Solver
• PA 2: Fast Boggle Solver
• PA 3: Quad Trees
• PA 4: Clustering with MST

The Code Critic Assignment Process

Submit your programming assignments to the Code Critic for review. An email notification will be sent to you when your code has been critiqued. (You can modify the email address in the Code Critic, or even remove it, though I don't recommend doing that.)

My critiques will note any areas of your code that need to be redone and resubmitted. An assigment is not considered complete until I've marked it as Done in the Critic.

Assignments are broken down into subtasks. Submit each subtask when it's done and tested. This will give you early feedback and avoid bigger problems down the line. This is how big projects get done in the real world.

• Make sure all code compiles, runs, and passes any tests specified in the assignment.
• Implement the classes and functions according to the application program interface (API) specifications exactly, including
  • spelling and capitalization of names
  • number and types of parameters and return values
  • side-effects, if any
• Give each class its own header (.h) and implementation(.cpp) file. (Templated classes often have only a header file.)
• Put test code in a separate tests.cpp or main.cpp file. No testing or input/output should be in class code, unless such behavior is part of the API.
• Reduce resubmissions -- critique yourself before submitting. See the C++ style guidelines.

Feel free to include additional tests in your testing code, and additional private member functions as needed. In fact, you'll be critiqued for functions that are too long and unfocussed.

If you run into problems, email me. Put "EECS 311" in the Subject line along with the assignment name, and a problem descriptor, e.g., EECS 311 PA1: iterator compile error.

Wrap Ups

Every assignment ends with a wrap up where you submit the final complete working program via email. Do not use the Code Critic for this. In general, creating the wrap up includes:

• making sure your tests.cpp file identifies authorship accurately.
• using the Magic Makefile to create a Zip archive with the proper name.
• emailing that archive, and possibly other documents, to me with the specified Subject line.

The wrap up instructions for each assignment say what to send and what email Subject line to use. Failure to follow these instructions may result in assignments not being properly credited to you.

If I can't run your code by calling make and then executing the .exe file produced, you will get no wrapup credit.

Points will be deducted for code that generates compiler warnings!! Never assume warnings are harmless because they don't stop compilation. Many warnings are actually signals that your program may crash when run another machine, and the rest are about coding practices that are simply too bad to ignore.

Comments? Send mail to me.