Grading Guidelines for C Programming Assignments
Here are the guidelines that the graders will use in grading your future C
assignments. For each assignment, there will be a portion of the grade based on style points.
There is a good C style guide linked from the Moodle course page. That
said, here are some specific items graders will look for:
- Don't write Python, Java, or Racket style in C; write C style in
C. Look at the examples I've done in class, as well as in the Kochan book and online,
to get a sense of what C should look like.
- Indent well and use good style with braces. Again, look at examples.
- Provide a comment at the top of each file indicating who the author(s)
was/were.
- Provide a comment at the top of each function describing briefly what it
does.
- Use header files appropriately.
- Your code should be direct and minimal to get the job done. Don't use five
variables and three loops when three variables and two loops will get the job
done.
- In general, defining "helper" functions is fine if it contributes to making
the code more readable.
To grade style, we will use a scale that will resemble the following. Note that this has nothing
to do with whether or not the program is actually correct.
- 2 points: The program has good style, follows the above guidelines, and is something close to what I would expect to see in a reference source. There might be an occasional style glitch that we disagree with, but it doesn't stand out.
- 1 point: The program contains at least one considerable style error, or alternatively it contains a number of frequent style errors. Some elements of good style were nonetheless taken into account.
- 0 points: The program has considerable style errors. It may or may not work, but significant portions of it violate style conventions.