R. Clayton (rclayton@monmouth.edu)
(no date)
We would like to know our grades for assignment 1 so we don't repeat in
assignment 2 the mistakes we made on assignment 1.
I haven't graded the first assignments yet. However, the two most important
questions about your assignments are "Is it correct?" and "How convincing is
the argument that it's correct?"
Of these two questions, the second is more important than the first. An
assignment that's correct but has no correctness arguments at all will
probably be graded lower than an assignment that is incorrect with a
reasonable but flawed correctness argument. (Of course, it depends a lot on
the errors and flaws).
Because the two of you worked in different groups for the last assignment,
each should be able present a convincing correctness argument for that
assignment to the other. If you can't, then there's something you need to
work on.
This is an important skill you need to develop. All kinds of people - your
coworkers, your boss, your customers - are going to be asking you over and
over again if you code is correct, and you need to be able to answer them.
Also, you're going to be asking the question of others, and you need to be
able to analyze and judge the answer to figure out if the code genuinely
works or if they're trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
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