>When we got our graded projects back, he got 45/50. I got 48/50. I lost two >points for: >1) Using EQU * on labels (no DS 0H in SuperPet assembler) >2) Using the condition code as a return value from subroutines that were >testing for exactly one condition
>I pointed out to the professor (who of course had not done the marking -- >that's what grad students are for) that this was bogus, that both were >perfectly reasonable (even recommended) practices in assembler. He shrugged >and said "48 out of 50 is pretty good". Let's not be too hard on grad students who grade assembler projects to pay their tuition. I can tell you from experience that is pretty mind-numbing to spend all night reading and grading 60 assembler programs that do the same thing. And the tough decisions - should I deduct a point from Kurt Gluck because, even though his project greatly exceeds the requirements of the assignment, and is otherwise very well written, he consistently misspells "register" as "regester" in his code comments. (Of course, he probably went on to have a brilliant career somewhere and gets paid twice what I do. And yet, this is why I remember the name 35 years later). And then there was the beginner Fortran (WATFIV) class whose project was supposed to count the number of students in each class, and in the entire school, and if they did CLASSNUM=CLASSNUM+1 SCHOOLNUM=SCHOOLNUM+1 in their inner loop instead of SCHOOLNUM = SCHOOLNUM+CLASSNUM in their outer loop, I deducted a point for "inefficiency". Seems I was pretty ignorant about processor performance in those days. Not that I obsess about such things. :-) Jim Mulder z/OS System Test IBM Corp. Poughkeepsie, NY
