Functionality and Correctness

Every program longer than 5 lines has bugs. It's a fact of life. Part of your job is to squish as many bugs as you can, and your grade will be based, in part, on how well you do so (i.e., how well your program meets the project spec, passes test cases, etc.)

That said, it is critical that programs basically work. In industry, if you roll out a program that doesn't compile, or compiles but crashes immediately, or crashes on the primary required functionality, you'll be canned in short order. In this class, if your program doesn't even work minimally, we will fail it.

The #1 piece of advice I've had about this class is: start early. ``Failure to achieve a minimal working program is almost always due to starting the problem too late and trying to complete it in one long burst.'' (Ackley, 2004).