Announcements

• Read the course newsgroup.
• post to the course newsgroup from home.

General Announcements

Date: Wednesday December 6 Using Old Exams to Study

Question: How can I get old exams to study from? Once I have copies of old exams how can I use them effectively?
Answer: Here are some old exams from 108. You can also find exams from the Faculty of Arts and Science pages.

To study from an old exam force yourself to do the question without looking at the answers. Prof. Clarke provides a link to a version of the exam without answers and another version with answers. Print the version without the answers and then go away from the computer to work on the exam. It is very tempting to peek at the answer and then think "Oh, I could have got that" when really you are fooling yourself.

Date: Wednesday December 6 Exam Information

Announcement: Information about the final exam is now available.

Date: Monday December 4 A2 replacing A1 and A0

Question: Earlier in the term we were told that our A2 mark would replace our A1 and A0 marks if that worked to our advantage. In the posted grades my A1 and A0 marks are still the same. Why haven't they changed?
Answer: The posted marks are the raw grades - what really happened during the course. We use these marks to calculate your final grade. When we do this calculation we will either use the maximum of (A0 + A1 + A2) or (2*A2).

Date: Friday December 1 Getting A8 Back

Question: When and where will I be able to get my Assignment 8 back?
Answer: On the St. George campus, you can collect your Assignment 8 (and any other term work that you didn't get back during the term) from the CSSU (EA 106). At UTM, you can collect your work from outside Michelle's office. Assignment 8 is guaranteed to be available by Dec. 15.

Question: Why can't you have A8 marked before the final exam? If I can't get it back how can I study?
Answer: The last A8 submissions are on Friday December 8th. That doesn't give our teaching assistants enough time to do the marking. Remember that your TAs have their own exams to study for too. It is quite normal in university not to have all your term work returned before the final exmaination. As soon as the last A8 submissions are in, we will be posting a solution on the web-site.

Date: Wednesday November 15 Silent Running?

Question: What is silent running?
Answer: Silent running is a period near the end of an assignment due date or before a test or exam when the course teachers (professors, TAs, sysAdmins) don't give out any more information.

Question: Pardon?
Answer: Sometimes when an assignment is given out additional helpful information is provided by the instructor in the form of hints or advice on the course web-site. We try to keep these announcements for clarification and not for new information. Sometimes however it happens that we realize once we've heard a few student questions that some extra information is required. If you are a student trying to do your work, it is frustrating to have to check the web-site so regularly to see if you have the "latest" information.

With silent running, you can check the web-site one last time after silent running starts and know that there will be no additional postings between that time and when the assignment is due.

Question: Why are we using this for A7?
Answer: Assignment 7 is a big assignment with lots of potential for additional clarification. It also is due during your tutorial. Tutorial times vary from Tuesday evening to Friday morning depending on your section and your campus. It would be very unfair to the students submitting on Tuesday evening if additional helpful information were posted after they had submitted their solutions.

Question: When will silent running start?
Answer: For assignment seven, silent running will begin at 12 noon on Tuesday November 28th.

Question: What about the newsgroup?
Answer: The newsgroup will not have new postings about A7 during silent running.

Question: Can I still see my prof during office hours?
Answer: Yes, during this silent running period, you may still personally see your professor or a TA holding office hours. It is up to your own professor whether he or she will answer email about assignment seven during silent running.

Monday 6 November: Do you have "official" style?

Announcement: Last week in lectures you should have discussed coding style. You can check out Sun's code conventions here.

Wednesday 1 November: New Lab Location

Announcement: For Erindale section P0301 with tutor Jeremy Sills, the November 2nd lab will be held in room 161 of the North Building

Friday 20 October: Final Examination Schedule

Announcement: The December examination schedule for St. George is available here

Monday 16 October: That's not fair!

Question: I didn't name my files correctly for Assignment 1 but it was only a little mistake. I called the file "AssignmentOne.Java" not "AssignmentOne.java". You can't really mean that I get a zero on the assignment.
Answer: Yes, we really mean that. The rules for assignment submission say this:

3. Capitalization matters in Java, including in filenames.
   This means that class names must match the filenames exactly. For
   example, if your class is called AssignmentZero, your file must be
   called AssignmentZero.java, and not assignmentzero.java or
   Assignmentzero.java. Use the capitalization asked for in the handout
   and starter code.

and this:

     
8.If you do not follow rules 3 and 4, our automarking program will not
  be able to find your assignment. Therefore, if you violate either of
  them you will be given a zero. 

It would be unfair of us not to follow these rules after we have set them.

Monday 16 October: My Output Was Almost Correct!

Question: In A1, I simply forgot the period at the end of the sentence and consequently I got zero for correctness. Shouldn't I get some part marks?
Answer: No. The assignment says:

Except for x which will be replaced by an integer, you must print precisely 
these words including the capital Y, the period at the end of the sentence 
and the spacing: one space before the number, and one space after. In 
addition to looking at your program, we will be marking your output 
automatically and any output that isn't exactly as specified will receive 
a zero.

Monday 16 October: But I only missed one output?

Question: In AssignmentOne I missed one ouput at a very beginning ( A GetBalance output just before the first buy(7) call - it wasn't clearly specified that you need output just right at the beginning). The rest was completely fine. I lost 1% (10 marks out of 20 ) of my final mark just because i missed one output. Is it fair?
Answer: You are responsible for reading the announcements about assignments. The A1 announcements say:

Monday 25, September:

Question: In part one, do we need to print the number of pages remaining immediately after we instantiate p1?
Answer: The assignment handout asks you to print the number of pages remaining after each statement you have added, so yes, you'll need to print this information at this point in your program.

Monday 16, October: Why so picky?

Question: Why are you being so picky about little details like assignment file names and output format? In the real world where they don't use automarking programs this wouldn't be an issue.
Answer: It is true that our automarking programs need your files to be named properly and your output to be correct but this isn't the full reason why we are being so fussy about following assignment specifications. Part of learning to be a computer scientist is learning how to follow and write exact specifications. In the real world it will be critically important that your software meets specifications. A missing period, a misnamed file, a capitalization error could all have disastrous consequences in real software projects. It is extremely important that you learn this lesson sometime in your CS education and it is convenient for us that you learn it first.

We have estabilished a grading scheme which does not count your A0 and A1 marks if you do better on A2. This is because we realize that many of you will have trouble following specific instructions and we want to give you a chance to recover from a bad start.

Wednesday 11 October: Busy Computers

Announcement: At 5:30 yesterday when assignments were submitted the school computer systems were extremely taxed and the system response was slow. Some students experienced difficulty getting their files submitted quickly and found it difficult to make the deadline.
We will be accepting files that arrived by 6:30 p.m. as on time for this assignment. You should not expect a similar extension with subsequent assignments. You should expect that the crowds on subsequent assignments will cause the system to be slow around submission deadlines. Don't leave it to the last minute.

Monday 2 October: Memory Model

Question: My printer and version of ghostview at home is choking on the memory model slides. Can you help?
Answer: It appears that some versions of ghostview and some printers are having trouble with these slides while others are ok. Here are the slides in pdf format and Here they are again in PostScript for those who are having trouble finding them further down in the announcements.

Wednesday 27, September: Help, my CDF account wasn't existing

Question: At the time of the due date for A1 my CDF account didn't exist because I enrolled late. What do I do?
Answer: Submit your assignment electronically by the late submission time (Thursday 27th 5:30 pm). Give a completed "Request for Special Consider" form to your instructor. Once we have confirmed that you were among the handful of students whose accounts were created late, we will remove your late penalty for A1. Most students in this situation will not be counting A1 anyway because they will replace their combined A0 and A1 mark with their A2 mark.

Wednesday 27, September: No Appeals for A0 or A1

Question: The rules for assignment submission says something about appeals for remarks. Can you explain how this works please.
Answer: You can find a full explanation here . If you are still confused about it ask your instructor during an office hour.

Wednesday 20, September: IDE Specifics

Question:Will I be tested on how to do a specific task in Code Warrior?
Answer: Absolutely not, but it is worth your time to learn to use Code Warrior (or another IDE) well so that you can program efficiently.

Wednesday 20, September: Memory Model Reference

Question: Where can I find some reference material on the memory model diagrams my professor is using in lecture?
Answer: This model was designed by your U of T instructors and so you won't find it in a textbook. Here are some postscript slides that explain it.

Saturday 16, September: Code Warrior Instructions

Question: PC 00 doesn't seem to be available in the bookstore. How do I get started on A0?
Answer: We've put the sections of PC 00 that deal with Code Warrior on the web here . You might also find these other instructions with pictures helpful. Or there are also some instructions by Andria Hunter.

Saturday 16 September: St. George Tutorial Allocations

St. George tutorial allocations are now available. Look on the labs and tutorials page.

Wednesday 23 August: No announcements yet

(Except this one.)