[Unified-mailman] guides for submitting algorithms

Howard Kleinwaks howiek at MIT.EDU
Wed Apr 7 15:15:43 EDT 2004


Students,
During the grading of your CP problems, we noticed that some of you are 
having problems with your algorithms, or with knowing what we expect from you.

Here's what we expect:
Your algorithm should be detailed enough such that a code monkey from 
course 6 can take your algorithm and sit down and code it up, without your 
being there to answer questions.  What this means is that you need to 
explain all procedures, functions, and sub-procedures.
For instance, in the palindrome problem of CP2_4, you could not simply say 
that you would "reverse the string here".  Rather, you need to explain how 
you would reverse it:

Reverse String:
Get length of string using Get_Line;
starting there, use a reverse for loop to read in all the letters into a 
separate string;

Algorithms are not code, and should be written BEFORE you code, in a 
combination of English and pseudo-code.

-Howie



More information about the Unified-mailman mailing list