Distributed: Wednesday, 27 October 2004
Due: 9:00 a.m., Monday, 8 November 2004
No extensions.
This page may be found online at
http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/Courses/CS223/2004F/Exams/takehome.01.html.
Contents
There are four problems on the exam. Some problems have subproblems.
Each full problem is worth twenty-five points. The point value associated
with a problem does not necessarily correspond to the complexity
of the problem or the time required to solve the problem.
This examination is open book, open notes, open mind, open computer,
open Web. However, it is closed person. That means you should not talk
to other people about the exam. Other than that limitation, you should
feel free to use all reasonable resources available to you. As always,
you are expected to turn in your own work. If you find ideas in a book
or on the Web, be sure to cite them appropriately.
Although you may use the Web for this exam, you may not post your answers
to this examination on the Web (at least not until after I return exams
to you). And, in case it's not clear, you may not ask others (in person,
via email, via IM, by posting a please help
message, or in any
other way) to put answers on the Web.
This is a take-home examination. You may use any time or times you deem
appropriate to complete the exam, provided you return it to me by the
due date.
This exam is likely to take you about eight to ten hours, depending on
how well you've learned topics and how fast you work. You should not
work more than eleven hours on this exam. Stop at eleven hours and
write There's more to life than CS
and you will earn at
least 80 points on this exam. I would appreciate it if
you would write down the amount of time each problem takes. Including
that information will earn you three points. I expect that
someone who has mastered the material and works at a moderate rate should
have little trouble completing the exam in a reasonable amount of time.
Since I worry about the amount of time my exams take, I will give two
points of extra credit to the first two people who honestly report that
they've spent at least six hours on the exam or completed the exam.
(At that point, I may then change the exam.)
You must include both of the following statements on the cover sheet of the
examination. Please sign and date each statement. Note that the
statements must be true; if you are unable to sign either statement,
please talk to me at your earliest convenience. You need not reveal
the particulars of the dishonesty, simply that it happened. Note also that
inappropriate assistance
is assistance from (or to) anyone
other than Professor Rebelsky (that's me).
1. I have neither received nor given inappropriate assistance on this
examination.
2. I am not aware of any other students who have given
or received inappropriate assistance on this examination.
Because different students may be taking the exam at different times,
you are not permitted to discuss the exam with anyone until after I
have returned it. If you must say something about the exam, you are
allowed to say This is among the hardest exams I have ever
taken. If you don't start it early, you will have no chance of
finishing the exam.
You may also summarize these policies.
You may not tell other students which problems you've finished.
You may not tell other students how long you've spent on the exam.
You must both answer all of your questions electronically and turn in a
printed version of your exam. That is, you must write all of your answers
on the computer, print them out, number the pages, put your name on
every page, and hand me the printed copy. You must also email me a copy
of your exam by copying your exam and pasting it into an email message.
Put your answers in the same order as the problems. Please write your
name at the top of each sheet of the printed copy. Doing so will earn
you two points of extra credit.
In many problems, I ask you to write code. Unless I specify otherwise
in a problem, you should write working code and include examples that show
that you've tested the code. You should also document your code.
Just as you should be careful and precise when you write code and
documentation, so should you be careful and precise when you write prose.
Please check your spelling and grammar. Since I should be equally
careful, the whole class will receive one point of extra credit for each
error in spelling or grammar you identify on this exam. I will limit
that form of extra credit.
I will give partial credit for partially correct answers. You ensure
the best possible grade for yourself by emphasizing your answer and
including a clear set of work that you used to derive the
answer.
I may not be available at the time you take the exam. If you feel that
a question is badly worded or impossible to answer, note the problem you
have observed and attempt to reword the question in such a way that it
is answerable. If it's a reasonable hour (before 10 p.m. and after 8
a.m.), feel free to try to call me in the office (269-4410) or at home
(236-7445).
I will also reserve time at the start of classes next week
to discuss any general questions you have on the exam.
Topics: UML, reading documentation, collections, interfaces.
Using UML, diagram the inheritance and implementation hierarchy of the
classes, abstract classes, and interfaces in the Java collections framework.
Documentation on that framework is available at
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/collections/index.html.
You need not submit an electronic version of this problem.
Topics: testing, introspection
As you may have noted, JUnit assumes that you'll spend some time designing
appropriate tests for your classes. Is it possible to automate some tests?
For example, can we take a class that provides a variety of unary methods
with integer parameters and test what range of integers they work on?
Certainly. By using introspection, we can determine the names of those
methods and ways to call them. We can then call each method with an
appropriate variety of parameters (large negative, small negative, zero,
positive, large positive, random) and see whether or not it succeeds.
Write a class, UnaryIntegerMethodTester, that aids in that
kind of testing. The constructor to UnaryIntegerMethodTester
should accept a Class as a parameter. (It should throw an
exception if Class provides no nullary constructors.)
UnaryIntegerMethodTester should provide two methods
randomTest(int n) and structuredTest(). Each
should do a variety of tests and print out the exception stack for each
exception it finds.
The randomTest method should call each unary integer
method in Class using a randomly generated number as the
parameter. The structuredTest should try a consistent
set of values (e.g., -2^16, -2^15, ... 2^16).
Topics: XP, refactoring, class design
Beck repeatedly tells us that regularly refactoring is a key aspect
of extreme programming, but gives few, if any, concrete examples of
refactoring. Give two useful examples of refactoring, one of methods and
one of classes. These examples should be useful in the senses that (1)
they help show what refactoring is and (2) they demonstrate benefits
(in clarity, efficiency, correctness, or some combination thereof)
from refactoring.
Topics: factories, introspection, anonymous inner classes
As you know, most Java classes provide a toString method,
which converts an object to a string representation. Many classes therefore
also provide a constructor that does the reverse. Such constructors take
a string as the only parameter, parse the string, and build the object.
Classes that provide string-based constructors are an excellent context
for factory methods. In particular, we might create a
ParsingFactory interface that could then be used for a factory
for any of those classes.
public interface ParsingFactory
{
public Object parse(String s)
throws Exception;
} // interface ParsingFactory
We can now fairly easily create our own factories. For example, here
is a BigIntegerFactory.
public class BigIntegerFactory
implements ParsingFactory
{
public Object parse(String s)
{
return new BigInteger(s);
} // parse(String)
} // class BigIntegerFactory
However, it is so straightforward to create such factories that we should
be able to write a method that builds them for us. Write a class,
FactoryBuilder, that contains one static method,
makeFactory(Class c), that, given a class with a parsing
constructor, returns a ParsingFactory for that class.
We might use your methods as follows:
ParsingFactory f = FactoryBuilder.makeFactory(Class.forName("java.math.BigInteger"));
Object[] objects = new Object[args.length];
for (int i = 0; i < args.length; i++)
objects[i] = f.parse(args[i]);
These are some of the questions students have asked about the
exam and my answers to those questions.
- For problem 3, with refactoring, when you say give examples, do you want extremely specific examples such as "This is some code, this is what I would do to refactor it, this is how it would look after refactoring, this is why it is better", or would a more general answer be sufficient?
- I want to see real code.
- Although your now-repaired sample code assumes you can create a
Class object by refering to the full name of the class, that strategy doesn't seem to work. What should I do?
- Use
Class.forName(nameofclass).
- Can
parse throw exceptions?
- It can now.
- How do I found out the class for
int, given that int is a primitive type?
- Try
Class.forName("int").
- What is the relationship of problem 2 to JUnit?
- You should not use JUnit for problem 2. Problem 2 is to help you think about some of the things going on behind the scences in JUnit.
Here you will find errors of spelling, grammar, and
design that students have noted. Remember, each error found corresponds to
a point of extra credit for everyone. I limit such extra credit
to five points.
- "in in" should be "in" [SM, 1 point]
- "turn ... in" should be "submit" [EC, 1 point]
- 2^-16 isn't an integer [SR, 1 point]
- certainly colon [RS-G, 1 point]
- "tell" should be "tells" [LP, 1 point]
- "that convert" should be "that converts" [LP, 0 points]
- "
StringFactory" should be "ParsingFactory" [SM, 0 points]
False errors
- Sentences shouldn't end in prepositions. Hence, "... they work on" is an invalid way to end a sentence. (Many linguists are happy to permit sentences to end in prepositions.)
Tuesday, 26 October 2004 [Samuel A. Rebelsky]
Sunday, 31 October 2004 [Samuel A. Rebelsky]
;
Check with Bobby