Show Lecture.HowToFlunk as a slide show.

How To Flunk CS253

Sarcasm Alert

Overview

It’s easy to fail CS253!

Anybody can do it!

We will discuss a few sure-fire methods, below.

Cheating

A great way to flunk this class is to cheat. Here’s how you do it:

• Share your design with others.
• Design jointly.
• Share your code with others.
• Code jointly.
• Give your code to someone who promises not to copy it.
• Post the assignment, or your code to the internet: pastebin, message boards, stack overflow, ❝tutoring❞ sites, etc.
  • They’re ungoogleable!

Don’t read the assignment

You were in class when I presented the assignment, so you’ve got a pretty good feeling for what it’s all about. Therefore:

• Don’t actually read the assignment before designing.
• Don’t read the assignment before coding.
• Don’t re-read the assignment when you’re done to make sure you got it right.
• Certainly don’t copy the essence of the writeup into your .cc file.
• Make especially sure to ignore the Requirements section.
  • I’m not serious about that part—maybe it should be called “Suggestions”.
  • It’s at the end, so it’s not important.

Don’t compile your code

Compiling is the TA’s job, not yours. Therefore:

• Don’t compile your code after each change.
  • Especially after a change that can’t break anything.
• Don’t compile your code as shown in the assignment.
• Compile your code on a completely different compiler than the one that the TA will use.
  • Compiling on a Macbook is perfect! It’s not really g++!
    • Each assignment, at least one student gets a zero though their code compiled perfectly … on a Macbook.
• Don’t actually use your make—compile manually.
• Only -Wall is required, so don’t use anything but -Wall.

Don’t test your code

Testing is a waste of time, especially for you, the most brilliant programmer who ever lived. Besides, it’s depressing. Who wants to find bugs? Therefore,

• Don’t run your program with the data given in the assignment.
• Don’t run your program with the data that tests corner cases.
• Don’t run your program with the data that tests error cases.

Don’t test your packaging

Similarly, testing your packaging is a waste of time. Sure, the writeup says to create a CMakeLists.txt containing blah blah blah, but that’s only a suggestion. The TA has lots of spare time, and will figure out how you packaged your code. Also, if you left out a file, I’m sure that the TA will stop everything and send email to you requesting that file. Therefore, it would be a waste of time to:

• go into a empty directory
• unpack your tar file there
• type cmake . && make
• run the program

Office Hours

• Going to the instructor’s office hours is for losers.
• It’s a sign of weakness.
• He has no candy.