CS-240 Assignments


Programming Assignments

All assignments are due at 11:59pm of their assigned days.

Setup your Go environment

Please follow these instructions for setting up for Go environment for assignments, as well as pointers to some necessary/useful tools.

Assignment Submission

We will use Blackboard to submit assignments. Please follow the instructions given in each assignment for testing and submitting your work.

Late Submission

You should submit your work on an assignment (electronically) before its due time. All assignments will be due at 11:59pm on their selected days.

You have a total of 72 late hours to use throughout the semester (but not beyond December 6). After you have used up your late hours, each additional day late will incur a 10% lateness penalty (1 minute late counts as 1 day late). Submissions late by 3 days or more will no longer be accepted. Friday and Saturday both count as days. (Late days are tracked automatically, so you don't need to email before using one.)

We will grant no-penalty extensions only in the case of illness (with a doctor's note) or extraordinary circumstances (with the involvement of the dean of your residential college). If illness or an extraordinary circumstance will cause you to submit an assignment late, then you should discuss the matter with your instructor as soon as possible.

Please plan your work on the assignments so that travel, interviews, athletics, touring, student clubs, extracurricular activities, holidays, etc. do not cause you to submit it late. None of the above reasons nor a heavy academic workload constitute an extraordinary circumstance.

Coding Style

All of the code you turn in for this course should have good style. Make sure that your code has proper indentation, descriptive comments, and a comment header at the beginning of each file, which includes your name, username, and a description of the file.

A portion of credit for each assignment is determined by code quality tests, using the standard tools gofmt and go vet. You will receive full credit for this portion if all files submitted conform to the style standards set by gofmt and the report from go vet is clean (that is, produces no errors). If your code does not pass the gofmt test, you should reformat your code using the tool. You can also use the Go Checkstyle tool for advice to improve your code's style, if applicable. Additionally, though not part of the graded cheks, it would also be advisable to produce code that complies with Golint where possible.

Version Control through Bitbucket

Because accidents can happen and it is good practice, we require you to use a version control system to maintain your code for this course. We ask that you setup an account with Bitbucket, a web-based hosting service for projects that use the git revision control system. Bitbucket allows you to have an unlimited number of free private repositories, so please take advantage of this and do not make your code public. We have put together instructions on how to set up an account with Bitbucket as well as pointers on how to use git. Alternately, you may use a similar service called Github, which provides a Student Developer Pack that is free for students.

Commit and push your changes often. You alone bear the responsibility in making regular data backups, so that you don't lose your data.

Instructions for setting up a Bitbucket account

How do I git?

This page has some useful tutorials on git: Git Tutorials
In particular, tutorials 1 and 5 will be most useful for this course.

The basic git workflow in the shell (assuming you already have a repo set up):

Finally, Bitbucket 101 is another good resource.

Collaboration Policy

Programming, like composition, is an individual creative process. Individuals must reach their own understanding of the problem and discover a path to its solution. During this time, discussions with friends are encouraged. However, when the time comes to write the code that solves the problem, such discussions are no longer appropriate; the program must be your own work.

Do not, under any circumstances, copy another person's program, comments, README description, or any part of the submitted assignment. This includes character-by-character transliteration of another works (whether inspected visually or copied digitally), but it also includes derivative works (i.e., by renaming variable names or subtly shifting around statements in order to try to hide that copying has occurrred). You are also not allowed to use other people's code, comments, or results, even when "citing" them -- all work must be your own. This includes work done by other KAUST students this or past semesters, as well as any other code you find online.

Writing code for use by another or using another's code in any form is academic fraud and will be dealt with firmly according to KAUST's disciplinary policies. You are also responsible for ensuring that the code you write for the assignments is not readable by others, which includes sharing with students in future years or posting publicly on the Internet.


Last updated: 2017-08-15 18:39:04