Individual and team programming:

The following rules are written for individual programming assignments. When you are assigned a team member or members, the rules apply to individual teams. For example, where it says "You may not work together on the same program," this means "Your team may not work together with another team on the same program."

You may:

• Discuss the assignments with one another.
  • If you don't understand something about the assignment, ask. The best people to ask are myself and my teaching assistants, but there is no harm in talking to other students about the assignments.
• Help others debug their work.
  • Sometimes other people will notice immediately something that you have spent hours trying to find. Maybe they've had the same problem. Being "stuck" for long periods is not a good way to learn.
  • More often than not, your errors become obvious when you try to explain your program to someone else. The other person doesn't even have to be a programmer; in fact, it's probably better if they aren't a programmer. It's often said that explaining your program to your dog can be a big help.
  • If you help someone else, don't overdo it--don't write their program for them. Help them understand their errors and how to fix them, but don't do it for them.
  • If someone is helping you, do not let them take a copy of your program. Not everyone is honest.
• Use, without attribution, anything I post to the Web.
  • If I post it, it's so that you can use it. I will know where it came from.
  • However, it's an important habit in general to give credit to any source that you "borrow" code from--it's the honest thing to do.

You may not:

• Work together on the same program.
  • Talking about the program is fine, but when it comes to writing the program, do it by yourself.
  • Writing programs jointly is unacceptable. You will be caught and you will fail.
  • If you write a program jointly and try to hide the fact by making cosmetic changes, this will be regarded as further evidence that you know the rules and are being deliberately dishonest.
  • Working together may be acceptable in your home culture, and it is usually encouraged in business; it but working together is not acceptable in this educational system.
  • If you discuss your assignment extensively with another student, and make reasonably detailed plans about how you will do it, and then go off and each write each program separately, you will be surprised at how different they turn out. I have never had a problem with programs that were "accidentally" the same.
• Copy another’s code.
  • If you copy someone else's program--even just a part of it--the fact will be noticed.
• Allow your code to be copied.
  • Fair or not, this is the rule. If you and someone else turn in the same program, both of you are guilty, regardless of who did the actual work.
• Lend your code to someone else.
  • There is no good reason to do this, and if they copy your program, you are at fault.
• Leave your code lying around where someone else may copy it.
  • Be careful with your thumb drives and your program listings
• Use any code from textbooks or the Web without my permission.
  • Let's be clear. There is no problem with looking up how to do something, and copying two or three lines to, say, open a file, or create a Frame. Even an entire method of, say, ten lines, should be OK--particularly if it's a general-purpose thing that might be used in a lot of different programs.
  • Finding code that does a significant part of your assignment, and using it, particularly if you use it without attribution, is a violation.
  • For the most part, it should be pretty obvious what is assignment-specific and what is general-purpose. If in doubt, ask me.
• Have someone else write your program for you.
  • This one is so obvious I didn't even think to mention it in my lecture.

Penalty for first offense:

• You will be reported to the Office of Student Conduct.
• You will receive an F in the course.

If you think you may have accidentally broken a rule, come and talk to me about it. You will be much better off than if I discover it myself.

I don't want to catch you cheating. It hurts you and it's a lot of work for me. I go to a huge amount of extra effort to make it difficult to cheat. But it's my job to watch for cheating, it's my responsibility to make things as fair as possible, and I'm good at it.