Notes on Lab Writeup 1

Summary: While your work on lab writeup 1 was generally acceptable, I think you may benefit from some general discussion of my expectations on that writeup and some key problems.

Contents:

• Grades
• Postconditions
• Naming
• Formatting

Grades

Most of you got most of the problems correct. As I warned you at the start of the semester, such work probably earned you a B (or lower, if you made some mistakes). Experience shows that people do better on exams than on homework assignments in my class.

Postconditions

We'll talk more about preconditions and postconditions next week. For now, note that your postcondition should say something fairly formal about the result. For example, a postcondition for quadratic-root should say what it means to be a root (result is a number such that a*result*result + b*result + c = 0).

Naming

Please name your procedures what I tell you to name them. At times, I may write automated testing programs that will only work if you follow the designated naming conventions.

You will also find it helpful to name numeric constants, such as pi, so that your reader doesn't suddenly wonder why you're dividing 22 by 7 or using 6.28.

Formatting

• Please make no lines longer than seventy characters.
• Please hit a carriage return at the end of each line.
• Please preface each comment line with a semicolon.

If you don't follow these guidelines, DrScheme is likely to complain when I try to execute your program. Your email program is also likely to wrap the content, which screws everything up.