Sat, 19 Oct 2013, 23:22



My students,

I just got this email today, so I am responding immediately:

 
> Dr. Patt,
>  
> I wanted to ask for you advice on something before I risked 
> any sort of academic dishonesty violation.
> I was curious if we could write "test case" programs to fill the arrays 
> at x3100 and x3200 respectively and whether it would be a violation 
> of the rules to share those test cases with my study group. In no way 
> do I want to share the actual program that processes the information. 
> The idea was that we could help "test" each others programs by trying 
> to come up with interesting ways to break them.
> The TA's already suggested writing such programs for our own testing 
> purposes, I'm just curious if it would be against the rules 
> to share those dummy programs with others.
> I'm guessing that you would prefer we test our own programs 
> but it never hurts to ask!
>  
> R/S
>  
> <<name withheld to protect the student who thinks it never hurts to ask>>

  		 	   		  
The TAs were absolutely correct taht it is a very important part of your job
to come up with test cases to test the programs you write, and in fact, the
goodness of your test cases go a long way in catching errors before you 
submit your programs for grading.  ...or, years from now, before you release 
your programs to the outside world.

Thus, your "guess" is correct.  I do not want you sharing test cases.  I want
you coming up with your own.  It is too important a part of the assignment to
not insist that it be part of your individual work.

If anyone has shared test cases, please immediately remove all access to any
test case you did not generate completely on your own, and send me email 
regarding who you have shared test cases with and the extent of that sharing.  
I will follow up with you individually after I have read your email.

Good luck completing the assignment by tomorrow night and successful completing
the course.

Yale Patt