Memorable Programming Assignments? 126
Albert Schueller asks: "This fall I'll teach introductory programming for the third time. The class is generally populated by students from a wide range of backgrounds and interests-liberal arts and science types. While we use C++, the language isn't really the issue. Rather, the goal is to introduce basic programming ideas like loops, logic, modular programming etc. What are some of your favorite programming assignments that would be appropriate for students at this level?"
All First Level C++ Course Should (Score:2, Funny)
and after that.... beat any student that thinks main can return anything other than an int. Beat them well.
void main works some places. (Score:1)
It does not work everywhere. [delorie.com] Grow up. ANSI C has main returning int, so return an int already. I don't see you passing struct timeval as the first argument to printf. Standards exist for a reason.
--Joelife? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:life? (Score:1)
Re:life? (Score:2)
We did that. (Score:1)
1) input (random, "drawn")
2) Computing states
3) displaying
There were two of us working on competing versions of each sections, and they had to work interchangably. Funniest moment was when we compared the two systems for computing the states. One of the two was about an order of magetude faster. The guy who wrote the slower one said, "There's no way it can be faster. You used booleans. Boolean
Re:life? (Score:1)
Basic image processing (Score:4, Interesting)
After loading the 'image', we were required to provide operations that the user could select and perform on the image, such as blob detection, scaling, blurring, etc. (This would be a nice way to introduce modular programming by defining an API for each operation to use and such.) Saving of the image was also supported.
An assignment such as this would be a great way to bring it all together; matrices, for loops, bounds checking, modular style and others would be covered, showing how all the little things contribute to a larger application.
Assignment (Score:1)
I bet you they'll actually want to program that one.
Mandelbrot set! (Score:2, Interesting)
My limited programming classes (Score:1)
Whatever you pick (Score:1, Insightful)
Make it a game. They'll have fun, a few will even want to expand on it. Let them (preferably tell them beforehand they'll get better grades for well-programmed more elaborate versions of the game).
step 2:
let them choose which game, and give a basic explanation of an algorithm to drive the game (overlaying arrays for tetris, function-mapping for roads for a simple racing game, collision detection for asteriods (point them at at least 5 websites explaining this, as it gets rather mathematically), using unique pixel colors for platform games,
step 3:
teach them to get network play operational (use kdegames for this, you won't regret it)
step 4:
give +2 for a kde game
just my
Re:Whatever you pick (Score:1, Funny)
Mazes and parties (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, my most memorable freshman programming assignment (punch cards/line printer/mainframe no less) was to simulate a cocktail party.
The party was a two-dimensional array representing the room. At the edge was a door and in the center was the bar.
You fed the program a list of guests including name, arrival time, planned departure time and how interesting the person is.
Guests arrive and go first to the bar. From there they mingle by trying to move a square at a time if it will make the average "interestingness" of those surrounding that square more interesting that the average surrounding their current square.
If the guest cannot move to a square such that the surrounding guests are, on average, more interesting the guest is then he will go back to the bar.
One last provision...each trip to the bar causes a guest to become one point less interesting but to think he is one point more interesting and each drink also increments the planned departure time by one.
Re:Mazes and parties (Score:2)
Re:Mazes and parties (Score:5, Funny)
So is solving a maze.
Re:Mazes and parties (Score:2)
So is solving a maze.
Unless it starts to get boring; then stop.
Re:Mazes and parties (Score:1)
Re:Mazes and parties (Score:2)
That is the funniest thing I have read all day. :-)
Re:Mazes and parties (Score:1)
Two points: (Score:3, Interesting)
First:
You'd better believe it's the issue. Language determines design is a Bell Labs aphorism. Another way of saying the same thing is that the (human) language in which you think and speak determines what you can think and speak about.
While I happen to be a big fan [gnu.org] of C++, I will go on record as saying that it's not a good language to use for beginner programmers. (Neither is Java.) I'd say either Python, or Pascal (you know, that language whose major design goal was to teach introductory programming).
At least, if you are going to use C++, use a good text like Accelerated C++ by Koenig and Moo. Otherwise you'll spend too much time teaching "how to use C++" and not enough time teaching "how to write a good program."
Second:
My favorite prof in the intro sequence gave us a module that drew playing cards on the screen. (All ASCII-based with ANSI escape sequences for colors, no annoying graphics programming.) We had to write the logic to play Solitaire.
While there are a lot of problems that CS majors would find cool to solve, those aren't necessarily the same ones that will grab the interest of people "from a wide range of backgrounds," as you say your audience is.
Off the mark, dude (Score:2)
You'd better believe it's the issue. "Language determines design" is a Bell Labs aphorism.
It's not the issue in a computer science class. Yes, language definitely affects design -- but this is not a real-world engineering problem. If the assignments illustrate theory, and it's theory that drives the curriculum, then the language is only an issue to the extent that it illuminates the theory.
Please note that Bell Labs is not a teaching facility.
In real-world engineering, however, your point totally holds. The end result of an undergraduate CS education should be adability, and the facility to think in whatever language the situation demands.
Re:Off the mark, dude (Score:2)
Yeah, but this is an intro programming class we're talking about. C++ is fine for production code written by professionals, but they don't strike me as great teaching languages.
The point of an intro class is to draw people in, help them to see how cool it is, get them thinking in the right way, and give them some foundation so that they can go on. Tracking down subtle malloc bugs or pointer problems is enough to bring seasoned he-man programmers to tears; I can't imagine what it would do to an unsuspecting liberal arts major.
Personally, I started with BASIC and Pascal. Both are limited languages, but Pascal taught me a lot of good habits that helped me when I got to less anal languages. Without that kind of discipline, something as no-safety-guards as C or more-than-enough-rope-to-hang-yourself as Perl might have killed me dead. Or worse, killed the people who had to maintain my code.
C++ in intro (Score:2)
C++ is certainly not such a language!
Pascal is a decent choice. I'm personally a fan of Schemefor the first semester (worked marvelously at Macalester), but not religious about that. Java could work OK, if students use a very limited subset -- it's not a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot language -- but it's very hard with Java not to get into high-level structure questions inappropriate for the first semester. It's probably better for the second semester, when you start talking ADTs.
Perhaps you'd quibble with some of the previous paragraph, but I think we've basically found consensus. On Slashdot!! And without any Microsoft-bashing, even....
Re:Two points: (Score:1)
The linguistics side of that is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and in its strong form (the one you stated) generally isn't taken very seriously. However, language does influence thought, that's certain.
I think a more direct relationship is true for computer programming, however, which is really the point of this discussion anyways.
Re:Two points: (Score:2)
The language determines the edge between what is worth doing and what is not worth doing, and therefore determines design. Of course a lot of the design will be much the same for a lot of languages, at least kinda-sorta. You don't use the same language for the measurements of camshafts and for the fish that got away.
The linguistics side of that is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and in its strong form (the one you stated) generally isn't taken very seriously. However, language does influence thought, that's certain.
What happens is jargon, which fills in the missing concepts and terminology.
I've always found (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I've always found (Score:2)
Re:I've always found (Score:1)
Or make sure P is 0.
Or both...
Re:I've always found (Score:1)
sys 64738 - Man, I've been looking for that for the past 2 weeks trying to rack my brains as to what it was... Geesh. And of all places to find it...
NP=P
when,
N=1
P=0
P=257 where N between 0 and 255 and = assignment is only allowable for 8 bits and dropping of high bits is done for overflow.
a round of been after loads of symbolic algebra, computational match classes.
Games (Score:2)
Now let's see - what's easy to write? Maybe a card game(solitaire?) or a tetris-type thing or other puzzly-thingy, or very simple 2D action games (hey, they fit in 4KB back in the day).
immediate, fun feedback (Score:2, Informative)
Something along the lines of RoboCode would be ideal:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/libr
But since you're doing this in C++, you'll have to roll your own.
Basically, whatever it is that they're doing, make it something that can take input from some external source, and have its output be read by something that can transform the output into something fun. This means a *lot* of work for the teaching staff, since they'll be writing lots of libraries and/or server/client code.
For example:
output for their code are integers ranging from 0 to 2^16. These integers are fed into a digital to analog converter and the students get hear the result. Student will go from producing a single tone (they'll have to create a sine wave, or even a triangle wave is fine) to chords and melodies in no time! lots of good programming and SIMPLE programming meat to chew on.
students could write a black jack player. the input will be integers representing the value of their card, and they'll output if they want to hit or stay. then the staff (you) could write a nice gui and driver around the thing and the students can play black jack (or any other card game...) against a program that they wrote. you could also make the programs play against each other.
etc., etc.
Best,
andrew
Re:immediate, fun feedback (Score:3, Insightful)
then the staff (you) could write a nice gui
I like this bit of evilness: write your GUI beforehand, and then write a specifican, but make it wrong. Tell the students that the GUI won't be ready for a week, but they will be graded on how they interact with the GUI. Tell the class to write the program and test code to prove the interface works (error checking not required). On the day the assignment is due, collect the their program and the test code, and give them the GUI in library format (previously announced that way of course). Make sure the library doens't impliment the specification, but just tell the students "I will be testing with this GUI, not your test program, since you didn't have time to test with my implimentaiton I'll accept revised versions that work for one week, you will lose points, but not as many as if your program doesn't work. Of course you know that their program will not work with the GUI so they don't lose points, they just sweat a little.
Evil, but fun to do, and it fits the real world very closely.
Re:immediate, fun feedback (Score:1)
Also, I'm a big fan of 'weed-out' classes & projects.
Mike Coles
'bluelip'
You guys are all nuts!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're one of the posters on this thread who thinks that a bunch of liberal arts losers are going to program pool table simulations and Mandelbrot sets, then you're living in a fantasy world.
The following is THE MOST DIFFICULT homework problem they were able to solve: Write a C function that takes an int, and returns one of the strings "st", "nd", "rd", or "th" to describe the ordinality of the associated number [e.g. 1 returns "st", for "1st", 2 returns "nd", for "2nd", 3 returns "rd", for "3rd", 4 returns "th", for "4th", etc.] The trick was that e.g. 11 returns "th", but 21 returns "st". A handful of them were able to get that right.
The final project was to write a program that would take large files and decompose them into smaller chunks, each small enough to fit onto a 1.44MB floppy. Not a single student in the class came close to finishing the project, and the class included at least three fellows who were already programming for a living.
Re:You guys are all nuts!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You guys are all nuts!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Write anything !
Re:You guys are all nuts!!! (Score:1)
In sloppy pseudo
Open input.dat for reading
while not eof
open file x.dat for writing
while isize of floppy in bytes and not eof
readbyte
outputbyte
increment i
increment x
Am I missing anything?(ignoring the initialization of x and i each time through, or having to check how much room a floppy can really hold because of bad sectors or filesystem fluff)
If you are actually writing to a floppy, I suppose you might need a "wait for new disk" bit.
I think that kind of class sounds neat, but I also realize that you'd never have enough students at my uni to get paid.
(my uni lowers your pay if you have less than a certain % enrollment and doesn't pay you at all below another % and usually force you to cancel the class, even if those enrolled comprise all of the students that meet the prereqs in the entire uni and all need that one class to graduate. Bastards.)
Re:You guys are all nuts!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is my biggest complaint about Comp Sci degrees. Many of these people are useless programming anything with math. At my old company, I would rather hire a math guy with zippo programming experience because it was easy for those people to pickup programming. Just try and teach a CS guy math! I seriously wish they would start differentiating the degrees, e.g., Comp Sci with specialty in numerics or something.
That kind of nonsense is why there's 50+ email clients and only a handful of the important things like audio/video compression etc... Things with numbers.
Re:You guys are all nuts!!! (Score:2)
fortunately, I was the only CS student in my numerical analysis class, which was tought by an EE and full of EE & ME students.
Re:You guys are all nuts!!! (Score:1)
And here I thought it was because a very large number of people use email clients every day, and because the relavent protocols are well documented and publicly available, while compression algorithms are used by a relatively tiny number of people, and are typically patented, poorly documented if at all available, and require more math than i suspect the average EE knows either to invent.
Besides which, it sounded like your parent was complaining about trying to teach CS to people "only taking this class because it's required" (and who apparently have more clout with the dean than should be allowed).
Re:You guys are all nuts!!! (Score:2)
The most common math instructor follows the book, example for example, and then tests you on similar things. Students end up going through the motions.
The worst instructor does the above and then tests you on extreme extrapolations of the simple examples.
The best instructor ignores the book's examples, points out the tricky stuff, why it is tricky, and other ways to look at the problem. They also relate the material to real life. The exams are a combination of stuff that was taught and a variety of extrapolations. (if the mean on an exam is 35/100, your exam or teaching is probably at fault, though an entire class of apathetic students is possible.)
In general, math majors are the only people who really care about the classes as everyone else is required to take them in addition to their major. Non-math majors see no immediate relevance to what is being taught.
Re:You guys are all nuts!!! (Score:1)
All of which makes your "troll" comments pretty silly.
Re:Java Solution (Score:1)
sort (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, 15-127 (Score:4, Insightful)
The only assignment I remember from my first programming class was one in which we read in stuff from a file into a linked list, printed it forwards and then printed it backwards. The abstraction of the linked list was so cool, and when it actually worked I felt like king of the nerds (little did I know the horrors to come).
When I was at CMU, there was one intro to programming class, and it was no fun for anyone. Now they've broken it up into people-who-might-take-another-CS-class, and people-who-don't-like-smelling-like-the-cluster, hence a class that is very light on fun and heavy on syntax and object oriented garbage, and one light on programming and heavy on pointy clicky fill in the blanks and make a game happiness.
stepping onto my soapbox:
While we're talking about intro classes, I think everyone who is going to take any additional classes in computer science, especially in the systems area, should take their first class in C, and it should be no fun. Every now and then you can toss them something fun, but learning the discipline of malloc/free, strncmp, etc., will serve you so well when you get to do object-y type computer science stuff. Writing good code, in a scientific or engineering sense, is just like learning to use UNIX - if you didn't suffer, you didn't learn. And if you get to new/delete or just new and then forget about it, you never learn the discipline that writing good code demands.
-- steps off soapbox.
First year (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometime in the fourth week, our lecturer announced the eagerly anticipated first Assignment. I couldn't wait, because I expected to ace it, after all, I had years of programming experience, a huge advantage over my peers. Not so: We had to write an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program. I was stunned. I had never done anything that complex in my life, in any language, and now I was being asked to do it in a functional language! However, many people achieved recognition rates over 80%, and some people rates as high as 98%, even though most students were first-time programmers. It just goes to show what people are capable of when pushed.
The same lecturer (Andrew Taylor [unsw.edu.au]) later came up with a whole series of Evil assignments -- his students tell stories about them to this day. For example, our second assignment in Comp 1A was to write an AI for the card game Hearts [one.net]. To mark the assignment, he wrote a system that ran submissions in randomly chosen four-player games automatically, and ranked them by total score after some number of games. Half the marks were based on the performance of your AI! He even made the ranking software available beforehand so that students could test their algorithms against each other in mini-tournaments.
Re:First year (Score:2)
I guess courses like that are good at times. (I know I've had my share of "killer assignments/labs".) As a lecturer you need to have a good knowledge about how much work your students have in other courses at the same time. There's nothing worse than having multiple assignments like these due in one week.
Re:First year (Score:1)
: Fruitbat :
The programming assignment I remember (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The programming assignment I remember (Score:1)
so all i have to say is:
no, god no.
Re:The programming assignment I remember (Score:3, Insightful)
As for a general response, all the books that I used for CS (C++ 1,2,3 and intro is asm) Had both example projects and "problems" at the end of the chapter. Why don't you open the text you are teaching out of or *gasp* go down the hall to the library and check some books out.
One I happen to remember is along the lines "Write a program that guesses a number between 1 and 1000 in as few guesses as possible. Detect lying by the player." This is a perfect first semester problem. It forces the use of screen and keyboard I/O, it forces the use of loops. By assignment you can demand that it is broken down into functions. It introduces the idea that you have to detect and deal with bullshit input.
Finally, to all those to say "make it something fun" or "make it games" GROW UP. Go to a bullshit "tech institute" if you need the professor to spoon-feed you and forcibly retain your interest.
-Peter
Re:The programming assignment I remember (Score:1)
Go to a bullshit "tech institute" if you need the professor to spoon-feed you and forcibly retain your interest.
There is nothing wrong in trying to make the assignments interesting. Any assignment that encourages the students to experiment and go beyond the actual text of the assignment is good. The goal of a teacher has to be to make his students learn more, if they do that by having interesting assignments thats the way to go. Of cource if you cant make an interesting assignment to teach a particular thing then they have to take a boring one. But you can always add a little competition to the mix, eg sorting: all the algorithms are in the book, who can make the one that will run fastest, everyone should be able to finish the assignment but if people spen a little extra time fine tuning their code to beat the other person/group then they'll learn more
One excellent assignment we had was pac-man in java, using inheritance for the ghost we could easily replace the 'AI', using inheritance for the walls we could make 'one way' walls, invicible walls, walls that opened/closed on a timer etc The 'board' was read from a file so we even made a 'level editor'. We never actually implemented all the extra ideas we had, but i Think I've got the source lying around somewhere so I might pick it up again
This is probaly not stuff for the first C/C++ class. But if you can make the game yourself with a 'go in random direction' AI for the ghosts. Assignment: Replace the AI with one that goes in the direction of pacman unless there is a wall in the way. Bonus: Make a better AI, promise extra points for those that makes the one that is hardest to get away from, promise extra points to the one that is most fun to play.
Second Assignment: Add 'power pill' make ghosts run away when pac man has power pill.
Re:The programming assignment I remember (Score:2)
Sure, interesting is good. Fun is good. It is easier to work hard at something fun. But in a first semester "this is what a loop is, this is what it is good for, why not use "i" for the loop variable?" class a game is a distraction from the fundamentals and is a less than ideal way to teach them.
BTW, I think that Java is a HORRIBLE language to teach total neophytes on. You either have to teach OOP right out of the chute (but you have to teach procedural at the same time so they can write some methods) or you have to do a lot of arm waving and "Don't worry about why you are doing all this "class" stuff, you'll get that at the end of next semester." which teaches them "this is all black magic, so just mimic what I do and don't worry about how it actually works" right out of the box.
To illustrate, I asked several "Java people" (to include professors) if there was an assembler for the JVM. Not one of them knew, or could even make out if this was a sensible question. I finally found the set of (published?) machine instructions somewhere at java.sun.com and a couple of unofficial assemblers by google.
Java has some really cool features, but it is a dumbed-down language aimed at dumb programmers with the effect of keeping potentially smart programmers dumb.*
-Peter
* Don't get me wrong. One of the smartest guys I have ever met, and probably the best programmer I have ever known is a Java wizard. The point is that as a teaching language it is exactly the worst thing in many ways.
Re:The programming assignment I remember (Score:2)
I do most of my professional work in Java these days, so you'd expect me to disagree. But you're 100% right. Java is a language with most of the sharp edges hidden away between a lotta cushy padding. And generally, I think "Thank god for that," even though I personally find it constraining.
Why? Because half of the programmers out there are below average. (Or, as a mathematician I know reminded me, more than half the programmers are below the mean.) If I'm going to work on somebody else's code, I'd much rather it be in Java. Bad Java is salvageable; bad C or Perl is so impenetrable that you might as well just off yourself. Or, perhaps better, the person who wrote it.
Personally, I like to drive fast cars, the kind of sports car where you can hear the engine's every growl and feel every pebble. The kind where you can turn on a dime and give yourself whiplash by stepping on the gas pedal quickly. But can you imagine the carnage if all cars were like that? For everyday people and everyday uses, minivans are all most people should be allowed to use. Ditto Java. But although minivans and Java keep people safe, they make it impossible to build your skills past a certain point.
Re:The programming assignment I remember (Score:2)
Scheme Interpreter in Scheme (Score:2, Interesting)
See Abelson and Sussman's classic computer science text, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs [mit.edu] (aka The Wizard Book [jargon.net]), for details. This book is also an excellent introduction to the basic concepts of computer science.
Connect four (Score:1)
Re:Connect four (Score:1)
Guy's name was Roy - could sum up 3 weeks of lectures in five minutes sort-a guy.
True, the course couldn't have been too hard - I was actually in the sixth form (er - New Zealands 12th year of education - 2nd to last of highschool) when I did the course, and I got an A.
But anyways - no way could it be done in 10 minutes - five classes in ten minutes? you're joking... It wasn't greatly difficult, I coded mine over a fri night + weekend, but it wasn't just fill in the blanks, You were given empty classes - that's method dec's, what they should do, and a few static finals - CELL.COLOR.RED = 1 etc.
Even if you'd done it before, I doubt you could Type the code, comments, and do error checking all in ten mins., I strongly doubt.
Game of Life (Score:2)
Some good beginner exercises (Score:4, Interesting)
When given a number from 1 to 52, spit out the name of the card to which it refers. If you want to make it interesting, tell them to solve it twice, using a different method each time. This has two probable solution types: 52 element lookup table or judicious use of the modulus operator. At the end of the assignment, there is usually a small amount of code (easier for beginners to debug -- easier to grade), but gets the gears turning for people not used to thinking in terms of algorithms.
Keep your eye on those folks who write out a series of 52 if-else-statements or a giant switch statement; they're going to need some tutoring soon.
---
Enter a number as input and spit out that number in hexadecimal and octal.
---
Enter a number under 100 and spit out that number in longhand (36 turns into "thirty six")
---
Read in a variety of data (user's name, age, favorite color, etc.) and spit it back out in a pleasant greeting: "Hello <name>! You are <age> years old and your favorite color is <color>."
---
These aren't horribly difficult -- so you won't drive many people away -- but you still have the opportunity to teach basic I/O, general style, adequate commenting, algorithm efficiency, and (most important) how to approach real-world questions in the step-by-step manner required in programming (multi-threaded/multi-process smart-ass programmers here on
Far too many people who program suffer from lifelong-geek syndrome: knowing how to program for so long that they've forgotten what it was like to learn how to program. As long as you demonstrate sufficient patience, anyone can be taught basic programming skills. I truly believe that most can grok pointers as well assuming they stick with programming long enough and have a good enough teacher.
Good luck with the class.
Honestly, games (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't you mean Towers of Hanoi? (Score:2)
GAMES!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
For example start with somethign simple like Hangman, then move to somethign a little more difficult like the towers of hannoi (spelling?) I also had a lot of fun programming the game of monopoly in my introductory programming class. So many diffrent objects to create!
Celestial Mechanics (Score:1)
Another simplification was that we didn't use a continuous flow of time. We cut the flow of time into discrete ticks (minutes or seconds), and calculated the change in position of the spacecraft from one tick to the next. The spacecraft is given an initial position and velocity, which are used to calculate the position and velocity in the next tick (the x and y components being done separately).
From one tick to the next and for each direction (x and y), it breaks down into:
1. calculating the gravitational force exerted on the spacecraft by the earth using the masses of the earth and the spacecraft, the universal gravvitation constant, and the distance from the center of the earth to the spacecraft.
2. Using a = F/m to find the accelleration of the spacecraft due to gravity.
3. Using v_new = v_old + a * delta (delta is the length of a tick) to get the new velocity
4. Using p_new = p_old + v_new * delta to get the new position.
5. Repeat.
You can do some neat stuff with this. The two that I remember doing were
1. Start with the object at say, 100 miles up, and find the minimum velocity needed to stay in orbit, and the minimum velocity needed to escape from the earth.
2. Bring the moon into play and find the velocity needed to do a figure 8 orbit around the earth and the moon.
One problem with this is how to look at the orbits. We used Gnuplot.
This is quite heavy on physics, which might lose some students, so I'm not sure if it's a good assignment for an intro-level course, but I do remember it being a lot of fun.
Robotics (Score:1)
Some of the kids had a hard time; but isn't that the point of introductory level CS classes, to weed out those who would rather chat on AOL or read their email in class?
My first program (Score:1, Offtopic)
20 PRINT "CARACTACUS POTTS IS THE GREATEST!!!"
30 PRINT "STRONGBAD IS A WUSS!!!"
40 GOTO 20
Re:My first program (Score:1)
I started out with a TRS-80 Color computer -w- 16K Ram and an external (audio)tape drive - upgraded to "extended color basic" a few years later... Ok, o the OS(basic interface) was written by Mirosoft - but they weren't really considered bad guys back then... funny, I seem to remember the trs-80's crashing a lot - displaying @ signs all over the screen... ah... some things never change...
Re:My first program (Score:1)
towers of hanoi (Score:1)
Give them some broken code... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ideally you want to ease them into this slowly, give away the location of the first bug - bombing if you enter a string where numbers are expected for example, provide test data for the second and so on. Another important thing is to ensure that if the student chooses to re-write an entire function they don't side step another part of the exercise by obliterating another of your carefully crafted flaws.
The exercise tests the students understanding of the language, ability to prepare realistic test data, and ability to find common bugs like off-by ones, buffer underruns, overflows and so on. It's also pretty good preparation for the "real world" where you will need to read other code, fix other people's errors and improve their code, besides being damned interesting if done right.
Unnecessary (Score:2)
From the early days of programming, I recall that everyone that is just starting out programming will automatically strew various bugs and imperfections around their programs.
Hence, the big thing you learned outside of the classroom was how to debug and to interpret error diagnostics.
Funny, but years later I'm still doing the same thing.
Re:Give them some broken code... (Score:3, Interesting)
Roman numerals? (Score:2, Interesting)
The first programming assignment I got at university was to convert between Roman and Arabic numbers. Mind you, this was for a "real" CS course (that is, my whole degree was computer science), and I was told to write it in Ada, so it wasn't exactly what you'd call fun ;-)
Something like this would help teach loops, and programming of simple logic and arithmetic. It would also teach the importance of input validation. A Roman number is all letters, so you have to read it into a string, but only certain letters have any meaning.
Also, the Romans had no representation for zero, nor (AFAIK) for negative numbers. They may have used fractions, but not decimals. The Arabic to Roman converter should (probably) therefore accept positive integers only. What, then, does the program do if the user inputs, say, "3.7"? The library function that reads an integer may read "3" and stop on the decimal point, or silently round it to 4. This would not be a good thing, so you'd need some validation there as well.
To simplify it, you could convert just one way. Roman-to-Arabic is probably easier than Arabic-to-Roman. You could also ignore the rule that says if a letter comes before one that has a larger value than it, you subtract the smaller from the larger. That is, 4 is normally written as IV (5 minus 1), but you can also write it as IIII. (I believe the Romans did this early on. You might also see clock faces that use IIII for 4. This is for the sake of symmetry with 8 (VIII) on the opposite side.)
Tell them that the program has to handle numbers up to 1,000, just so that they don't type in a big array or switch or if-then-else.
Gomoku (Score:1)
calculate x^y for very large numbers (Score:1)
Sounded simple at first.. ended up making a function that multiplies an array of numbers by an array & repeating it until done. Included functions for calculating amount of memory needed, estimating size of equation, time to complete, etc...
Brought it in 1 week later - professor gave me a 4.0 of the course and said I didnt have to come back
As far as writing in c++ goes, it would require the student to utilize pointers, arrays, type casting, functions, reserving & freeing heap memory, converting end result to decimal & displaying.
A small emulator... (Score:1)
Two that would be good... (Score:1)
Another good one would be to enter into IBM's robocode programming challenge - write 'simple' java robots that fight to the death - http://apps.alphaworks.ibm.com/rumble/
Re:Two that would be good... (Score:1)
Sorry, dude, too easy to pass up.
A bigger project (Score:2)
My favourite is to have them implement a simple recursive-descent parser for a minimalist computer language. This is not hard at all, and given that you can limit the scope sufficiently (e.g: a command-line calculator), it should be possible to have as a four-week assignment (assuming you have already teached them about ifs, while-loops, and recursion).
Another great example is a small computer game. You could either choose the silly variant (paper-rock-scissor), or a more advanced variant (tetris, snake, asteroids, space invaders, pacman) using simple graphics. Write the graphics-routines yourself, and have them put in the game-code.
A simple trick for making your students do larger projects, but limit the work, is to write everything yourself first, and then delete the lines you think they should be able to do, and replace them with a comment about what they should insert there. It's very efficient for learning.
Another nice one (Score:1)
What I've wanted to try (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always wanted to teach a class just so I could give this assignement: Write a RPN calculator that does addition and subtraction, no more. A few rules that are different from every other project: other class mates will see your code; redit will be lost for implimenting functionality byond addition and subtraction; the due date is next week, but you get MANY extra points by getting the assignment to me sooner; class dissmissed, get to work.
Then the next week I would copy everyone's program, and randomly hand it out to other students, with a new assignment: add multiplication and division to this program, and fix any bugs in the code. Time counts again. Note that even though I say is the random, I will in truth pick out who gets what, those who did a good fast job get aweful programs to work with, while those who did a bad job get good ones, and there will be a comment as each studnet picks up his assignment that this is an example to learn from. After they turn in the completed assignment (remember time counts) they will get another assignment, write a short paper to the author of the program you graded on what you found good/bad. (english skills don't count so long as it is understandable, ideas do)
Finially, everyone see's how their program looked after the second guy got done with it, and the comments. Grades for the second half will take into account how the first half turned out, so someone who got a horrid, non-working assignment and took all week to make some stupid algorithm work will get as much points as someone who was able to get their assignment done in an hour. How long it took the second programer to modify the orginal code is a factor, but minor since bad programs should not take down easy to modify code.
Just make sure that this is done early in the year, if they are supposed to learn C++ in your class, this won't work, by the time they can do this all their other classes are in crunch time and a good student may notbe able to get this done quickly. I recomend giving this assignment the first day of class, if they can't hack it then, they need more expirence than your class can give.
Ro Sham Bo (Score:2)
Read the /. article [slashdot.org]. Find resources at the Google Web Directory [google.com].
Don't forget (Score:2)
Be sure to give assignments that lend themselves to lots of creative solutions. This is especially true these days, with academic dishonesty so commonplace. If the assignment is open enough to allow people to solve it in many different ways, you will get a lot of different answers - this will make your life much easier when it comes time to detect the cheaters.
Simple graphics (Score:2)
You, the instructor, can supply the bootstrap code needed to get a drawing surface up in whatever platyform you choose. Supply a function like GraphicsMain() and ask the students to fill it in.
You can do all kinds of neat things like reading in points from a file and displaying them (you supply the files initially). Then have the students write a program to generate their own point files. Have them make a simple 2D visualization program.
This would be a great way to demonstrate modularity too, since you can emphasize that if carefully written, the code can be used later on the next phase.
In addition, these types of assignments are a lot of fun (since there is instant visual feedback) and they really lend themselves to creativity. Encourage everyone to explore for themselves beyond the boundaries of the assignment and you will get the brightest, most talented students submitting really interesting things.
I think a fractal engine which displays L-systems would be very appropriate, for example. Instructor supplies the bootstrap code, and a handout describing what L-Systems are, and asks the students to draw it. Not too difficult, a good example of file-io (to read the L-system) some basic maths (geometry, etc to get angles right - you can even supply this on the handout if you think the students might be lost), and string manipulation. There are a few ways to do it also, and the good students can come up with their own L-systems to demonstrate.
Those are some of my most enjoyable ideas.
decryption, C++ (Score:2)
I recall a particularly cool assignment where the professor gave us a long-ish (~1-2KB) chunk of text that had been run through a rotation filter. He gave us the background info on what rotation filters were, how to defeat them (look for most frequent character, that's 'e', determine the shift, then reverse that and print out), etc. all the theory to solve the problem. It taught us simple file I/O (open old, read data, do computation, print out into new), really simple data structures (making us think about the best way to store the frequency information), as well as a little baby-step taste of how cool encryption/decryption was. There was just something magical about running the program and having it work right, producing the cleartext. It's great to feel like James Bond cracking the Secret Evil Message ;-)!
The kicker was that he chose a very cool poem as the cleartext, so when you reached the finish line you got rewarded with a result that was actually interesting to read. This part might well appeal to liberal arts people, as well history types will be aware of how critical a role codes haved played throughout time.
This is just my very humble opinion, but are you sure c++ is the way to go for beginning programmers? I fully realize you may not have a choice due to departmental constraints. It's just my experience that most intro-level programmers being taught C++ have such a hard time with the language itself that they can't see past that to the applications of it. Otoh, a language with a C-like syntax is probably a good move because so many things use that (I've always said that if you learned C well you were half-way or more to learning any of a dozen other languages). So, have you considered something like Java or Perl? (Or, god forbid, python ;-)) Both of those languages are easier to grasp, enabling you to focus more on what you can do with them than how to write a virtual destructor... Heck, with perl you could give them a very easy taste of web applications development using cgi and databases, for example, a collaborative story writing system (user A writes chunk 1, B writes 2, and so on)...
Life (Score:1)
Supply them all the graphics primitives, teach them how to make a two dimensional array (or fake one), and teach them the loop structure necessary to traverse and iterate the machine.
For extra credit, ask them to find a good solution to the boundary problem. Or ask them to come up with a new life primitive. Or just expose them to all the primitives that are out there.
Finally show them that silly book written by that bright guy on finite automata.
Interesting Assignments... (Score:1)
Then there was the assignment where we had to write a program that produced itself as output...that made my head explode the first time I tried to figure out how to approach it....
hell (Score:1, Offtopic)
After living through that experience, I shouldn't have even entertained the idea.
Re: (Score:1)
How about the usual stuff (Score:1)
reading from stdin printing it out on stdout
taking a file name as an argument printing from it
program that takes a number-date and prints day of week
atoi itoa ect...
find what int has the same binary pattern as the float for the same value(hint: make a float pointer point to an int)
simple inventory program
such things...
Too bad it isn't assembler. (Score:1)
Build Your Own (Virtual) Computer (Score:1)
In some of the Deitel books (e.g., C++ Learn To Program, Java Learn To Program, etc.) they have a really helpful problem: implement your own Virtual machine using a predefined machine language. You can monitor the register states and see what happens after each command. If having them write the machine code themselves is too complicated, at least having such a simulation to play with, giving them an intuition for how a computer "really" works, could be very useful.
Of course, some people won't be that interested, but it's the kind of program that makes certain kinds of people fall in love with programming.
Ah the memories.... (Score:2)
Towers of Hanoi
Boggle
Tic-Tac-Toe
Bunny World -ok, Bunny World wasn't that simple
Lode Runner
Simple Fractals
Driving directions
Mad libs
Slot Machine
Simple Drawing Program
C interpreter - seriously, they gave this to second quarter students
If anyone wants details on any of these please ask.
a book recommendation (Score:2)
You might also look at The New Turing Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science [whfreeman.com] by A. K. Dewdney from W. H. Freeman & Co. [whfreeman.com] (ISBN 0-8050-7166-0) which is a good source for important and interesting CS topics, though it may be more work to construct concrete projects.
Algorhithims and "Computer Think" (Score:2)
Very early in my first CS class (like the second or third class after we got the obligatory lesson in history and basic terminology) our instructor brought in a loaf of bread, a knife, peanut butter, and jelly. She asked people to write instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a piece of paper.
After about 20 minutes she called on one person and followed their instructions, smashing bread into the jar and using the knife to stab the bread. It took a visual exercise like this to make people understand how each instruction is very important, and to be attentive to details.
Later when we did Towers of Hanoi she brought in three of those Fisher Price ring-stack toys. She showed us with those how to get the disks from peg one to peg two in a way we could understand.
One other thing that was helpful was being shown that we weren't just "learning C++" or "learning Java", that we were learning skills that are portible to other languages. After our first looping program we got a small booklet from our teacher that showed the same problem solved in several different languages.
As for actual problems we had to solve, I hated most of them, but I'm thankful for having done them. Most were intentionally difficult (reading and writing data in bizarre file formats) that made me a much better programmer.
Make the output cool (Score:2, Insightful)
The best way to make people (moderate geeks at least) excited about the programs they write is when they are excited about the output they produce. There are a few ways to get those results:
In essence what you are trying to avoid is the "I'm embarrassed to be proud of this" factor. The first time you pick up a musical instrument and haltingly jam out "mary had a little lamb" it's a huge moment. But you can't stroll into class the next day and say "dude, check it out. Last night I was playing Mary Had a Little Lamb. Oh yeah, I'm serious." If you can avoid the analagous situation, make programming fun while teaching fundamental skills, then even for non-geeks the 'ugh I don't want to do -that-' inerta factor is easier to overcome, hence making teaching fundamentals (and grading, no doubt) easier and more fun as well.
But what do I know . . . I took all my intro courses with hardcore CS majors. We were excited about spewing out ASCII UI's
A good "beginner" programming assignment (Score:2, Insightful)
In an improved version of this approach, each student was told to sort the numbers, and given the initialize(), value(i), and swap(i,j) functions. But they were not told how to perform the sorting. Afterwards, each different sorting algorithm that was implemented was described by the students, and the professor covered any techniques that had been missed. This leads to a discussion of O(N^2) vs O(NlogN). And a future assignment to implement and compare (graph) the efficiencies (number of swaps) of different sorting algorithms.
Ultimately, if you can foster a attitude of "here's a little bit, lets see how far you can take this", and then shape their results further, they will learn far more.
The most instructive assignment I ever had was based on this. It involved writing a simple 3D perspective drawing program from scratch. The instructor said we could use any language, on any computer, and write the code any way we wanted to. Grades were entirely based on how well it ran. Some time after we turned it in, he announced the next assignment: Extend the previous assignment to handle shading from multiple light sources. That assignment, whether intentionally or not, taught me more about commenting and documenting my code than anything else ever did.
This would be a good end-of-the-year project (Score:1)
This is a program i had thought about writing and posting for free on the web, but i got caught up in other things.
The map syntax for BZ flag is reletivly simple and could easily be generated in a C program, it would be interesting to write a program that would ask a few questions and based on the response generate a random map for BZFlag. I could write the program in a couple of hours, so if you give a group of 2-3 students a week to complete the project (plus time to examine the extrmemly simply BZflag Map syntax) it should do well at seperating out the good, average, and poor programmers.
Make a point of specifiying that the program working should not be enough, it should be lean as possible, and include documentation.
The Sieve of Eratosthenes (Score:1)