[CSC 204] Due Time for Program 5 and Late Penalties

[Andrew J. Pounds]

Several of you have asked about the due date for program 5

On Wednesday of last week I made mention of the fact that we might move
the due time for program 5.  This was due primarily to the fact that I
knew writing the merge sort for objects would take some of you a long
time.  To alleviate the burden of you having to write that code, I spent
last Thursday evening writing a detailed example of how to use the
binarySearch method from the Collections class.  If you remember, I also
sent you a sample of code last week to help you read in the words from
the text document.   After preparing the binarySearch example, I  sent
everyone an e-mail encouraging you to come to class on Friday because I
knew how pivitol that class day would be in helping you complete your
programming assignment.

During class on Friday I went over the example in detail and explained
how to use the two different types of comparators (for words and
numbers) with the binarySearch method.  I also demonstrated how the
binarySearch method would return the location of the object in the
ArrayList or, if the object was not in the list, return a negative value
that could used to determine where to insert the object in the ArrayList
so that the ArrayList remained sorted.    All of this is documented in
the Collections API.   Because I demonstrated how to use all of this,
and alleviated any need for you to write sorting, searching, or
insertion algorithms, I made the decision, and announced it in class,
that the due date would remain Wednesday at midnight.  Unfortunately
many of you were not in class to hear that.

I made the same announcement at the beginning of class on Monday and
brought copies of the material I went over on Friday -- but again many
of you were not present to hear the announcement or receive the material.

Now many of you are facing a deadline that you will not meet and are
asking about the penalty.  I will take off 8% (5 points) per day for
late assignments.  More importantly, if your assignment is late you will
not be able to receive any extra credit and there will be no opportunity
to resubmit your code.

-- 
Andrew J. Pounds, Ph.D.  (pounds at theochem.mercer.edu)
Associate Professor of Chemistry and Computer Science
Mercer University,  Macon, GA 31207   (478) 301-5627