Midterm
Wednesday, October 7, 9:00 to 10:50, in Sutliff 106. The exam takes the whole period.
It is programming, in a repository like an assignment’s. At 9:00 you accept it the way you accept an assignment, clone it, and open it in IntelliJ. Inside are a few classes to finish, each about the size of one task from an assignment — nothing on this exam is longer than something you have already written once. Push as you go. The last push before 10:50 is what gets marked.
It is marked by hand, for correctness and for style, as the syllabus says of both exams. A program that does not compile is still worth pushing.
On Zoom, you take it at the same time, with your camera on for the whole period.
What it covers
Weeks 1 to 6, up to and including Monday’s stacks and queues. Every topic below was practised in an assignment, so the assignment is the thing to look at again:
- Classes, objects and inheritance — weeks 1 and 2, and A2.
- Equality and exceptions — week 3, and A3.
- Ordering objects — week 4, and A4.
- Collections: lists, sets and maps — week 5, and A5.
- Hash tables, stacks and queues — week 6, and A6.
Generics are not on it, and neither is anything after fall break.
Open book. No AI.
Open book and open notes. This website, the readings, the Java API documentation, and every file you have written since August — your assignment repositories and your in-class code. IntelliJ’s own error messages, obviously.
No AI and no collaboration. The course AI policy applies in full, and on an exam it is not negotiable. You work alone.
The reason the first list is so generous is the second one. Nothing on this exam is a thing you could have looked up; being allowed to look things up costs the exam nothing and removes the one kind of panic that has no educational content.
How to prepare
There is no practice test. The practice is already there: the six assignments and the five quizzes. Monday’s class ends with time for questions about the exam.
If you cannot sit it
Make-ups are in the syllabus.