Lecture 4
Today: Hands-on lab, moving towards Hw2
Pre-lab reading: Game of Life handout and a review of the previous lab
The goal of this lab is:
- to see how much you can do when working under time
pressure, when you already know the problem and have done some work on it.
- to encourage you to think about getting organized, so that by the
deadline you have submitted a program that compiles and
implements a minimal functionality, together with a typescript.
- to continue working towards completing homework 2.
To do
- If you have finished or done more on
the previous lab,
please submit it now, but this time in Lab4.
Then move on to the next item.
- Start implementing the game of Life,
as specified in the next
homework 2,
following the directions and
the structure given in your handout. Start with the main function, as
described on the third page of your handout. But careful: copying from
the handout will not work. You have to put all the functions in one
file and to use C++, not C. Start with the functions Initialize,
WriteMap, Enquire and CopyMap: if you do them all by the end of the lab,
your homework is almost done: you will only have to write the code for
NeighborCount.
Submitting
At the end of the lab, submit the file life.cpp and a
typescript named typeLife in Lab4.
Even if you are done, remember to submit
hw2 in Hw2 (after generously embellishing it with comments and cleaning
the code to make it look as nice and readable as possible).
You should comment your program, make sure you have the required
header with all the information about you and relax:
the lab will not be harshly graded. I want
to see what each of you can do when working under time pressure.
Note: in the lab, you must work alone but you are allowed
to talk with each other about the assignment,
as well as ask questions to the instructor.
Grading
The grade for Hw2 is based mostly on the submitted homework, but
also on what
you did in labs 3 and 4. You have almost another
week to complete the assignment, plus TA help sessions and
my office hours on Wednesday before the homework is due.
A small part of the grade wil be based on the lab -
not necessarily for
how perfect it was, but rather for what it showed about your utilization of
the lab time, organization skills and focusing on the goal of the lab.