Programming Assignments How To

CSU540 Computer Graphics - Fall 2005 - Prof. Futrelle

Updated 10 September 2005


There are five parts of putting together a good programming assignment. They are listed here and then described in more detail below. Early in the course I'll produce an example meeting all the requirements of a properly structured assignment. Remember, when you write your comments or Readme, don't write for your instructor. Assume your audience is another CS student, but not necessarily one who has taken graphics, and certainly not one currently taking this course. This strategy is to assure that you write clear and complete descriptions of things, not assuming too much of your reader.

Javadoc

Javadoc is well documented. See my javadoc page, with links to four sources of information. Put your javadoc files in a subdirectory of your assignment, with the -d option.

Readme.txt

There are quite a number of things you might include in such a document. You might think of the newspaper reporter's dictum: "Who, what, when, where, why, how," adapted to a programming project.

Source code and class files

Both should be included. Your Readme.txt should say which one(s) should be executed and explain what should be seen, and possibly, what is printed to the console or to a file.

Screenshots (screen grabbing)

This is graphics. Screenshots are vital. Different platforms have different ways to capture screenshots. There is even a facility within Java itself to do this, in the java.awt.Robot class. Here is one example of how to do screenshots, and here is another. Most OS's have such capabilities built in. Some people use Gimp. On the Mac, I use Snapz Pro X (ambrosiasw.com).

Jar files

Jar files (Java archives) are similar to unix tar files, but offer more. For example, jar files can be made executable and placed on the java command line. Here's a page about how to do jars for this course.


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