CZroe
Lifer
In this post, "application" does not equal "program." I am referring to a collection of executable code which sometimes requires many supporting data files.
We all know...
An application folder should not be deleted as an alternative to executing the uninstall sequence because only the application knows what it has done to your system and how to undo it.
Likewise...
An application should not be executed outside of its installed program folder. The application's data and configuration files are not available and it may not run.
Anyway, I recently started this so-called "advanced" VB class. Less than two weeks ago, we (The class) turned in our work for our first grade.
I received a not-so satisfactory grade, despite following the teacher's instructions to the letter. This is my first class with this teacher, but my brother has an interesting story which I should tell first.
For some reason, she would make up things to count off on his work for. For instance, in her Cobol class, he would sometimes do things that were so advanced, he would have to explain them to her in the code. Typically, she would find something like say, comments, and count off 3 points for every line (With HUNDREDS of lines). This would turn the most advanced application in the class into the lowest-scoring (Big fat ZERO), and the brightest student into a failing student. We would've assume that it was simply that he was not followiing convention, except his friend whom he sat next to in class once got a secret little talk from the teacher: "You might not want to sit next to him. He's trouble." she said. It happened long before the singling out was apparant too, the guy only told my brother about it AFTER problems started. Now I'm CONVINCED that she's after me too (I am his TWIN brother).
The textbook includes "tutorial folders" which you are encouraged to save to a "Student Disk." These tutorial folders were copied onto the hard drives of the PCs to begin with because the teacher did not expect most students to have the original CD-ROMs with their books. I did not have a floppy when it was suggested on the first day of class, and I knew better than to do my work ON the floppy from past experience. I followed the tutorials and saved all my work to the tutorial folders on the hard drive. We were NEVER instructed to turn any tutorial work in, only two exercises from the third lesson. We WERE told that these exercises must be in the same directory structure and filenaming convention as the book's tutorials. ie, "A:\tut06\lc3Done.vbp"
tut06 = Tutorial 6
lc = Lesson C
3 = Exercise 3
Done = finished (in case you were editing a supplied lc3.vbp)
We were told "Exercises 3 & 5 are due Monday before class" We were also told to follow the comprehensively updated "GUI design and programming guidelines" on a certain page (Updated at the end of every chapter). These refer to visual and functional elements of a program to which all must conform to or loose points. Notice, there is NOTHING mentioning tutorial work. When I turned in my work, on a floppy, in the EXACT directory structure and filename convention, and having followed each and every guideline, I was in for a shock. She took off 33 points for each missing tutorial project (lcEdit.vbp and lcAlign.vbp). Further she deducted for not changing the focus of the command buttons from "Display" to "Print" when this was not in the guideline. I did not forget, I simply did not set focus BECAUSE we were not instructed to. I was strictly following everything to the letter to avoid what happened to my brother. In fact, the class had just started and SetFocus hadn't even been mentioned yet! You can not make up grading guidelines as you go...
Then, the real shock: 60 points off of one exercise. Two so-called "Compiler Errors" which were not errors at all. When I asked what she meant by "compiler errors" she said "You had a syntax error whcih was causing it to crash. You put a period somewhere where there wasn't supposed to be." I knew EXACTLY what she was talking about and it took everything I could to contain my smile.
This tutorial referred to sequential access files. The exercise contained an existing project with sequential access file which I had to code. In the book, when teaching the syntax for opening the files for input, we were shown examples with the full path name "A:\tut06\whatever.dat" I was not programming from a floppy, but I knew I would have to turn my work in on a floppy so I coded it to work from either location, provided that the sequential access file was included with the executable. I did this by substituting "A:\tut06" with just "." making it ".\whatever.dat" I then created comments explaining that "." is command-line speak for "current directory" just as ".." is command-line speak for "parent directory" and explaining that "the application is intended to run only from a directory including all required files." Hard-coding to a removable drive where the program is not located (She was definately compiling it to the hard drive) is not only bad programming: It's WRONG. I also explained in the comments the syntax was necessary for development accross multiple PCs as I did much of my work at home, then emailed it to merge it with the class work.
She must have compiled it and run it from the hard drive. Because other people hard-coded their application to look to the floppy drive, theirs worked as long as the disk was in. She jumped to the conclusion that mine was bad. After hearing her explanation, I gave her a quick run-down of its intended operation and got her to agree to look at it one more time, but it was clear she only said she would so that she wouldn't have to admit anything in front of the class. She will not answer my emails about her new evaluation of it and has been out of class the last two times.
When you execute the command that requires the file in my application, you get an error: "File not found" It is clearly not a "compiler error" as she says (Where did THAT come from?). 'Till the end, she still said "It crashed and that's that because it means that it is flawed" The file was supplied for my code to process and was it was not created by the application. I would clearly not be doing the right thing by making my application create a copy of the data file! Creating other more informative or fault-tolerant error message ("The data file must be in the application directory to process" "Please browse to the data file and click OK") were clearly far beyond the class' level. If she thinks that it is "flawed" because of this, I'll have to show her VB's own "flaw." Copy the VB98 directory to the desktop and execute VB6.EXE and it will run flawlessly. Copy VB.EXE by itself and it will not. "Unable to locate component" "The application has failed to start" "VBA6.DLL file not found" etc.
To top it all off, the first test results came in the same day (And the same sheet of paper): I got a 78 because she attacked me in the essay portions. Yeah, she's definitely out to get me (Mine CLEARLY showed that I knew what I was talking about and they were clearly head-and-shoulders above the rest of the class).
I certainly can not get her to correct things on my own. If I need to go over her head in the future, I will need confirmation of my claims. PLEASE HELP... Before it gets worse.
We all know...
An application folder should not be deleted as an alternative to executing the uninstall sequence because only the application knows what it has done to your system and how to undo it.
Likewise...
An application should not be executed outside of its installed program folder. The application's data and configuration files are not available and it may not run.
Anyway, I recently started this so-called "advanced" VB class. Less than two weeks ago, we (The class) turned in our work for our first grade.
I received a not-so satisfactory grade, despite following the teacher's instructions to the letter. This is my first class with this teacher, but my brother has an interesting story which I should tell first.
For some reason, she would make up things to count off on his work for. For instance, in her Cobol class, he would sometimes do things that were so advanced, he would have to explain them to her in the code. Typically, she would find something like say, comments, and count off 3 points for every line (With HUNDREDS of lines). This would turn the most advanced application in the class into the lowest-scoring (Big fat ZERO), and the brightest student into a failing student. We would've assume that it was simply that he was not followiing convention, except his friend whom he sat next to in class once got a secret little talk from the teacher: "You might not want to sit next to him. He's trouble." she said. It happened long before the singling out was apparant too, the guy only told my brother about it AFTER problems started. Now I'm CONVINCED that she's after me too (I am his TWIN brother).
The textbook includes "tutorial folders" which you are encouraged to save to a "Student Disk." These tutorial folders were copied onto the hard drives of the PCs to begin with because the teacher did not expect most students to have the original CD-ROMs with their books. I did not have a floppy when it was suggested on the first day of class, and I knew better than to do my work ON the floppy from past experience. I followed the tutorials and saved all my work to the tutorial folders on the hard drive. We were NEVER instructed to turn any tutorial work in, only two exercises from the third lesson. We WERE told that these exercises must be in the same directory structure and filenaming convention as the book's tutorials. ie, "A:\tut06\lc3Done.vbp"
tut06 = Tutorial 6
lc = Lesson C
3 = Exercise 3
Done = finished (in case you were editing a supplied lc3.vbp)
We were told "Exercises 3 & 5 are due Monday before class" We were also told to follow the comprehensively updated "GUI design and programming guidelines" on a certain page (Updated at the end of every chapter). These refer to visual and functional elements of a program to which all must conform to or loose points. Notice, there is NOTHING mentioning tutorial work. When I turned in my work, on a floppy, in the EXACT directory structure and filename convention, and having followed each and every guideline, I was in for a shock. She took off 33 points for each missing tutorial project (lcEdit.vbp and lcAlign.vbp). Further she deducted for not changing the focus of the command buttons from "Display" to "Print" when this was not in the guideline. I did not forget, I simply did not set focus BECAUSE we were not instructed to. I was strictly following everything to the letter to avoid what happened to my brother. In fact, the class had just started and SetFocus hadn't even been mentioned yet! You can not make up grading guidelines as you go...
Then, the real shock: 60 points off of one exercise. Two so-called "Compiler Errors" which were not errors at all. When I asked what she meant by "compiler errors" she said "You had a syntax error whcih was causing it to crash. You put a period somewhere where there wasn't supposed to be." I knew EXACTLY what she was talking about and it took everything I could to contain my smile.
This tutorial referred to sequential access files. The exercise contained an existing project with sequential access file which I had to code. In the book, when teaching the syntax for opening the files for input, we were shown examples with the full path name "A:\tut06\whatever.dat" I was not programming from a floppy, but I knew I would have to turn my work in on a floppy so I coded it to work from either location, provided that the sequential access file was included with the executable. I did this by substituting "A:\tut06" with just "." making it ".\whatever.dat" I then created comments explaining that "." is command-line speak for "current directory" just as ".." is command-line speak for "parent directory" and explaining that "the application is intended to run only from a directory including all required files." Hard-coding to a removable drive where the program is not located (She was definately compiling it to the hard drive) is not only bad programming: It's WRONG. I also explained in the comments the syntax was necessary for development accross multiple PCs as I did much of my work at home, then emailed it to merge it with the class work.
She must have compiled it and run it from the hard drive. Because other people hard-coded their application to look to the floppy drive, theirs worked as long as the disk was in. She jumped to the conclusion that mine was bad. After hearing her explanation, I gave her a quick run-down of its intended operation and got her to agree to look at it one more time, but it was clear she only said she would so that she wouldn't have to admit anything in front of the class. She will not answer my emails about her new evaluation of it and has been out of class the last two times.
When you execute the command that requires the file in my application, you get an error: "File not found" It is clearly not a "compiler error" as she says (Where did THAT come from?). 'Till the end, she still said "It crashed and that's that because it means that it is flawed" The file was supplied for my code to process and was it was not created by the application. I would clearly not be doing the right thing by making my application create a copy of the data file! Creating other more informative or fault-tolerant error message ("The data file must be in the application directory to process" "Please browse to the data file and click OK") were clearly far beyond the class' level. If she thinks that it is "flawed" because of this, I'll have to show her VB's own "flaw." Copy the VB98 directory to the desktop and execute VB6.EXE and it will run flawlessly. Copy VB.EXE by itself and it will not. "Unable to locate component" "The application has failed to start" "VBA6.DLL file not found" etc.
To top it all off, the first test results came in the same day (And the same sheet of paper): I got a 78 because she attacked me in the essay portions. Yeah, she's definitely out to get me (Mine CLEARLY showed that I knew what I was talking about and they were clearly head-and-shoulders above the rest of the class).
I certainly can not get her to correct things on my own. If I need to go over her head in the future, I will need confirmation of my claims. PLEASE HELP... Before it gets worse.
