352 News (Information)

First of all, I would like to sincerely congratulate those of you who worked hard and received a good grade on this class. I know that for many of you this was more work than you had anticipated. Unfortunately, as I keep repeating, the only way to learn to program is by programming, a lot. This requires one to spend a lot of often frustating hours in front of the computer. However, there is no other way around it. Many of you rose to the challenge and now possess the mental tools needed to tackle a wide range of software engineering problems. Good deal!

On the other hand, there are some who only seem to have a rudimentary knowledge of C++ and data structures. The grades reflect this.

I also want to apologize for making the exams include so much programming. I realize that making someone write a small program under such a tight deadline is a form of torture (in the business world it is known as a "death march") but it is the only way I can determine which students have actually done the homeworks. In a perfect world I would base the grade solely on your problems sets. Alas, given the current "culture" that would not be fair to the students that actually perform the work. So, I have to submit these same students to the exam torture. I wish there was a better a way.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun teaching this class. I hope you all got your money's worth.

Happy Holidays!

You can pick up your final outside my office, some have comments on them.

I cannot stress enough the importance of doing the problem sets. The only way to learn C++ is by actually using it, a lot. I realize that this is very time consuming but no one has yet found a better way. Also, the knowledge you learn with each program you write is cummulative. That is, you always learn something new, even after years of programming.

Finally, I have generated a graph with your current grade distributions. These are your current grades using PS1--PS8, exam 1, and exam 2, using their respective weights. For the PSs I just took the average of PS1--PS8 and did not eliminate the lowest two grades. This means that you can probably expect the the actual grades to be a bit higher, especially since many of you chose not to do PS8.

This is not a problem. In fact, there is nothing you can do about it. In general, we will not deduct any points for warnings, altough you should pay attention to them because they often point to possible bugs in your program (not in this case).

Also, the following code does not work.

string filename = "hello.html";
ofstream ofs(filename);

string filename = "hello.html";
ofstream ofs(filename.c_str());

string::size_type string::rfind(string)

string string::substr(string::size_type start, string::size_type length)

	List<int> i1;
	i1.push_back(5); i1.push_back(7); i1.push_back(15); i1.push_back(28);
	List<int> i2;
	i2.push_back(2); i2.push_back(6); i2.push_back(8); i2.push_back(21);
	i1.merge(i2); //i1 and i2 are sorted, the new i1 should also be sorted.
	cout << i1 << endl; //prints 2 5 6 7 8 15 21 28 
	cout << i2 << endl; //prints 2 6 8 21

Note:Failure to use the cover sheet (with signature) will result in an automatic loss of 50 points.

I should also mention that you cannot add two iterators. However, you can substract two iterators, but the result is an integer, as such:

vector<int>::iterator i1;
vector<int>::iterator i2;

//some other code in here

int distance = i2 - i1; //distance is the number of elements
                        //between i2 and i1.

vector<int>::iterator i3 = i2 + 5; //i3 points to the element 5 places after i2.

1. Here is the link to the Digital Workforce report. It is highly informative: job titles, salaries, skills in demand, etc.
2. I want to encourage more of you to post your questions or musings to the forum. Note that you do not need to use your full (or even real) name, if you feel that it will help you ask needed questions. I would also like to get some feedback/discussion on how the class is going, how much you are learning, what would you change, etc.
3. You can see the grade distribution for Exam 1 on the left. Those of you who did not show up for class (shame on you :-) Ive placed your tests right outside my office.

On a completely unrelated note, I just came across this article about Don E. Knuth, which I thought you might find interesting.

Also, there are some errors that many of you keep making in your programs. You can avoid these errors by following these rules (graciously provided by Buddy):

• Member variables should be private.
• Destructors should be virtual.
• In the constructors, members variables should be initialized or at least assigned.
• Should use "const" when a function is not going to change a variable.
• Should always implement default constructor.
• Some people are declaring friend functions in the private section of the class declaration. This is wrong.

string s;
for (int i = 0; i< s.size(); i++)
  cout << s[i] << endl; //print letter at position i

1. Staple and order the printouts such that the header file comes before its corresponding .cpp file.
2. Write your name and the name of the file at the top of each file.
3. Include an explanation of any "out of the ordinary" things you have done. (you know who you are ;-)

template<class Etype> class Sec {
	static int count;
};

template<class Etype>
int Sec<Etype>::count = 10;