COMP61511 (2018): Labs

An Easy Rain’s Gonna Fall?

In Lab 0, we did a couple of things that are, in some sense, part of programming interviews. However, you had arbitrary time to perform the task, which isn’t very realistic. So we are going to do another little interview-style programming task.

Prerequisites

You should be competent with:

  1. Blackboard
  2. A command line shell (bash, preferably)
  3. Python (version 3.x) programming (nothing fancy, basic constructs!)
  • In EPS Linux under the standard configuration, python gets you the right version
  1. The basic Python infrastructure (e.g., running Python programs; on lab Linux machines, the command is python3)
  2. The Python Documentation!

Topics

  1. Please make sure you’ve completed Lab 0 and the Pre Class Questionnaire (<20 minutes)
  2. Please set up the Gitlab Submission Application.
  3. The Rainfall Problem (≈30 minutes)

Submission details

  1. The repository also includes a prepare_lab1_submission.py script. If you run this in the unzipped directory, it will do some basic sanity checking and generate an archive suitable for submission. The invocation is python prepare_lab1_submission.py yourusername. So for Bijan, it’s python prepare_lab1_submission.py mbassbp2

Collaboration and aid

Your submission must be entirely your own work. And you should only discuss things with an instructor. You are not graded for correctness as this is a formative assessment. The point is what you learn, not how well you do!

If you finish quickly

Note that these times are intended to be generous to accomodate people experiencing Python or Linux for the first time or other lab issues: We allow for a full hour for this lab.

If you finish early, try playing a round of Rainfall golf or try to read Do We Know How Difficult the Rainfall Problem is?.