Common Programming Exam Errors
Here is a list of common errors that students have committed in previous exams.
You will receive no credit for an answer that commits any of these errors!
- You are not allowed to collaborate with another person before, during or after the exam. The work you submit must be your own. If we detect an answer that was clearly shared amongst two or more applicants, we will stop grading the test and all applicants involved will fail the test!! Don’t collaborate!!
- Do not hard-code the length of an array. Just because the examples require an array of length 3, say, does not mean that your program should be able to only handle arrays of length 3. Your program should be able to handle an array of any size! So if we see something like
int[ ] a = new int[3];
we will stop grading and give you zero points for the answer. - Do not use any I/O in your functions! You should not read in anything from the keyboard or write out anything to the console. A function should get its input from its parameters and return its answer using a return statement. Specifically, your function must be able to be used as is in a GUI-based windows application or in a browser-based web application. So if we see any of the following statements in your function, we will stop grading and you will receive no credit for your answer.
- cout
- cin
- printf
- scanf
- Console.WriteLine();
- Console.ReadLine();
- System.out.println();
- System.in.read();
- Any other I/O statement
It is okay to use output statements in your main program to display the results of calls to your function. But it is a waste of time to use input statements in your main program since it is okay to hard-code the values of any arrays that you use to test your function.