11/2/04

A student writes:

     Dr. Patt:

     I know we suppose to put sides of the triangle and some
     results in x3100 to x3105, but my program ends at x310A (hehe).
     May I have your permission to
     start the program at x2000 or something else.

     << name withheld to protect one with a strange sense of humor >>

Actually, this student is not alone. I have gotten about half a dozen email messages from students whose programs are so long that they compete with x3100, x3101, and x3102. Clearly, we can not have this. Either the test data will clobber the program, or the program will clobber any test data, depending on who writes to x3100 etc. last. When we picked x3100, etc., we had no idea that student programs would be so long as to cause a problem.

I could let you .ORIG x2000, rather than x3000, and that would solve it for many people. And, if you get stuck, certainly better to do that and take a penalty than to not turn it in and take a zero.

However, I am inclined to ask you to look carefully at your program before succumbing to this cop-out. If you really do have it working if you start at x2000, pleae look at the program you have written and try to see where you have wasted space. Have you duplicated code where it was unnecessary? That is, you could have branched to the same common code from several places, rather than duplicating the code several times.

Have you written your program by using the structured programming techniques we discussed in class, and systematically decomposed large steps into small until the final program just fell out of it? If not, I invite you to try.

Have you gone over your program with a TA, so the TA could point out to you where you were wasteful.

Good luck finishing this up in a first rate way.

Yale Patt