CS 112
General Lab and Homework Instructions

Lab work

1. You can work alone or with a lab partner.
2. Read the handout before proceeding.
3. Do the work, thinking about the significance of every step.
4. Always ask questions when you do not understand, but only after you have first read ahead in the handout: the answer might be on the next line!
5. Discuss possible solutions (to both lab and homework problems) with a lab partner. Programming is better done and understood when you exchange ideas.
6. The last 10 minutes of each lab session are devoted to a class discussion. Everybody is encouraged to participate with ideas, solutions, problems encountered.
7. The lab work has to be done during the lab hours and submitted by the end of the day (midnight). If during the lab you encounter difficulties and think you are not able to finish, you should raise this issue during the class discussion at the end of the lab.
8. The lab is not graded in detail. You will not receive feedback regarding what you did during the lab, unless you ask for it explicitly (preferably during the lab).
9. Your grade for the week's homework will be slightly adjusted to reflect the lab work. 20% of the weekly homework grade comes from the lab.
   
   A clean lab submitted in time is 100 points, and points are subtracted for intermediate cases (lateness, sloppy work, different degrees of common mistakes, etc.). For non submitting a lab you get 0 points, which are then averaged with the homework.
10. Except for exceptional and documented circumstances, no extensions will be granted for missed lab work.

Homework

1. The homework should be done individually, from the structural design of your program to encoding it in the appropriate language, editing the source file, compiling and debugging. respecting it.
2. While I start from the premiss that the honor code is being respected, I have to also remind you that it is relatively easy to detect fraudulent behavior such as copying or sharing pieces of code. Discussing possible solutions with study partners is OK, but - let me repeat - all other homework effort should be individual.
3. Homework lateness policy:
4. No late homework is accepted, except for special documented circumstances (such as sickness).
5. If you encounter serious difficulties during the first part of the semester and are unable to do your work in time, you should discuss the situation with me and decide whether it is appropriate to continue taking the class.
6. The follwoing chart gives the estimated difficulty of the homework programming assignments.
   
   

Project

1. The final project will be handed in around mid November.
2. Partial steps towards completing the project will be built in into November homeworks.
3. The final project work is under the same provisions as the homeworks - you can discuss ideas with study partners, but should do all the programming work without collaboration.
4. During the first week of December we will discuss in class various project-related ideas, possible solutions or unpredicted problems.
5. The last week of the semester is devoted to final project presentations and last minute debugging. This means that you cannot start working on the project at the very last minute, and assume that this will not affect your grade!
6. A percentage of the final project grade comes from the quality of the written accompanying documentation.