Programming Rubric

 

Adherence to standards

Where the specifications for a program are clearly stated, you must adhere to them in every detail. Where the specifications are not clearly stated, you must make good decisions about how the program should behave. A “good” decision is practical and satisfies the underlying intent of the program. Where there is any possibility of misunderstanding, you must document your decisions.

 

Breakdown (modular design)

Programs should use good modular design. In procedural programming this impacts choices about subprograms, parameters and global or local variables. In object-oriented programming it will also impact choices about objects, their public interfaces, and whether or not they are inherited.

 

Correctness of code

Programs must work correctly. Remember that the input may:

a)      be completely typical for the program OR

b)      represent a significant special case that the program must deal with OR

c)      represent a mostly insignificant special case OR

d)      have errors in it

 

Programs sometimes fail to work for trivial reasons and sometimes because of a critical misunderstanding of the basic logic for the program.

 

Documentation, style and user interface

Programs should be stylistically sound and well-documented. This affects things like commenting, names of identifiers, and logical structure. They should also be designed to have a reasonable user interface.

 

Efficiency of code

Programs should use the right tool for the right job. This means programmers must make good decisions about the algorithms and language features to use.

 

Fast coding

Once a programmer has chosen the design, algorithm and data structures for a code segment, actually writing the code should be quick, almost second nature.

 

General knowledge

In some cases you will need to demonstrate knowledge of general computing theory.