CSE 655: Lab Guide

• You are strongly advised to use the departmental Solaris machines for doing the (programming) labs. Although it is possible to do the labs on other machines, different implementations are often not entirely compatible with each other and you may run into unnecessary difficulties if you use other machines. Plus, the final lab you submit must anyway run on the Solaris machines, so you might as well use them throughout.
  If you do develop your labs on other machines (such as your home PC using Visual C++ or something like that), it is your responsibility to make sure that it runs properly on the departmental Suns before submitting them.

• The weight for each lab will be specified in the respective lab.

• Labs are to be done independently. General discussion of the labs with others who are also taking this class (same section) is allowed, but when it comes time to doing the work, make it your own. Labs which show an excessive amount of similarity will be taken as evidence of cheating and dealt with accordingly.
  Repeat: All labs must be done independently; no pairs or groups.

• Due before midnight: Labs are due by 11:59 pm on the day they are due.

• Late penalties (this is tentative; actual penalty will be as specified in the individual labs): 10% for each lab-day late up to 5 days late; after 5 lab-days there is no credit given for a lab. A lab-day is any day that the labs are open. If you keep your lab on your own PC and it crashes and wipes out your lab, etc., you are responsible. Any deviations from this policy will be posted on the newsgroup.

• Labs are to be submitted electronically. The time stamp on the electronic submission will be the time considered when assessing late penalties. Use the submit command. Check out the online documentation with the command: man submit

• Lab grading (tentative and approximate):
  • Documentation (25%): Documentation of the program consists of two parts:
    • Preamble: a brief write-up at the beginning of the program explaining the nature of the problem and the method of solution, including, if appropriate, a pseudo-code algorithm showing the logic of the program.
    • Code Segments: a few lines at the beginning of each code segment which performs an identifiable function; use blank lines generously to clearly separate and identify important code segments
  • Program structure (25%) The program should be well-structured and easy to understand without complicated and confusing flow of control.
  • Results (50%): The results should be correct, verifiable, and well-formatted.