exam post mortem

Exam wasn't that bad I think except that I didn't manage to get to the last question as I ran out of time.

So glad thats over..

Damn! Wasn't good on my end...after spending almost the whole night studying. I never expected that!

That sort of sums up the exam. Don't make a mistake, know your work and you will finish.

I left out two questions, which I went back and answered (After my brain calmed down) and I had 2 min's to spare...I made liberal usage of [...] in almost all my code.

Maybe I don't know my work (probably), but the first few questions that kept saying show cpp and header code. I'm sure didn't require both. Break my heart and tell me it did only if you can supply example code ( ).

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"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Douglas Adams
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ..." - Louis Hector Berlioz
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.

hi guys

Are you all C++ developers? I'm busy compiling an email to the lecturers asking if only REAL c++ developers will be able to pass this exam? I'm an oracle developer and that exam went COMPLETELY over my head. i got the singleton and i'm hoping i got SOMETHING at the facade but the decoupling of file & code visitor? where the heck did i miss THAT in the study material? or should i "know" this seeing that i must have "work experience" in c++?

i know of 1 mark that i got right, if they mark nicely i might have 35 out of 75... which according to my calcs isn't even enough for supp, so you might see me on this forum again next year! i am investigating the possibility of switching to a different module though. I REALLY hoped that this was my final exam for 6 years worth of studying... seems i'll be clocking 7.

oh well, better luck (or easier exam) next time!

1st Question
I choose MonoState, the more i think about it now the more i think its wrong, wanted to use Observer

Yea Q1 was monostate (although serializer and memento [which is more correct] were also good candidates). And I think the pattern they were looking for in part 2 was the composite pattern (half-way through the exam I changed it from Decorator)

The facade pattern question really easy and so were the theory questions about it. The abstract factory would be used when you want to create different bank / credit bureax classes. And the safety of the subsystem is maintained because the client is 'forced' to supply the bank etc classes so that the facade *will* use these to check the customer's credit worthiness, also it hides all the complexity of those classes. The code was poorly designed, but you it would have been a great place to use c++ friend keyword on a private getBalance() method.

I think I did pretty ok. Answered all of the questions although I don't htink my singleton code would have compiled I managed to comment the crap out of it so I might have scored because of that. Just made sure I made the constructor private, added a getInstance() method that returned a private static instance of the class.

The filevisitor and codevisitor questions were a bit flaky, aren't they one and the same thing? But I created a GenericVisitor class anyway and made the Strategy pattern on that.

Yea I got a pretty lot of work experience and in my mind if you don't have some years experience then the gap between what was expected based on last years paper and this years paper then you would've had a really tough time. What counted in the end was that I keep these patterns in mind when I'm @ work.

The Qt stuff was ok, my last minute studies were about the metaObject and the requirement to use Q_OBJECT to make it work anyway.

Not good for me. I just learnt too broadly and could not focus enough on the detail.

I reckon that I will be here next year. But without a doubt my understanding of the course material has improved significantly. Before I knew diddley-squat, at least now I know diddley-squat plus a little bit more.

I STRONGLY object to questions that say "Using your answer from Question xx above ..." There were two such in question 2.
I also STRONGLY object to "Answer the questions in Order".

See you next year.

That COMPLETELY was different from last years exam. I didn't expect that! I still managed to work through it all, but a lot was answered with just a "feeling" and nothing concrete. If generous, think I might pass, but my luck with exams this year, I have really battled.

Question 1 I chose serializer, onlt because it spoke of writing to a file (although in XML format)
The second part I said both Monostate & Composite. Monostate because the state gets stored, composite because they spoke of heirachical structure which I could only think of QObject to do it in, so each reward I said would be a child. But it threw me, that was the best I could get! Even now I still don't know.

Fortunately I learnt the structure of the Singleton, but it had extra bits in, but hopefully that was a few extra marks.

Couldn't do the strategy! Tried, but minimal (22 marks!)

Yea you needed to specify the .h and .cpp file contents because you had to change some stuff about the definitions of the classes, and show (in the .cpp) how you use the reworked definition.

Was better than I expected but I am very unsure about the outcome. Will have to wait for the results. I still have one exam left so keep my beer cold!

Cobus Neethling

The exam was up to standard for 3rd year advanced programming course, I thought. I used a virtual function for the strategy pattern (sans context). Those UP design patterns on the link that someone posted were right on the money (since Linda Marshall's been the external examiner for 2 years running).
Decoupling those classes threw me and I almost wrote a "god object", then got annoyed. Chucked out the hierarchy and used signal and slots to join them up.
Thank goodness for [...] //same code usage.
Not a trivial paper imo.
Message to next year's victims: Know all your main patterns. Know how to implement them. Rest assured that you will get reflective programming put to you.
Hope I passed, it's been a gas.

I arrived at the exam room about 15 min late so it was a bad start for me. Overall though, I think the paper was ok. Q2 through me off a bit and its the only question that I didnt manage to finish, the rest was doable. There were 5 questions right? Sorry, I have to ask, I barely had time to read the questions correctly

No, seven. You had to turn over!

@Rick

I did the same as you with the decoupling. By definition, perfectly decoupled classes have absolutely no dependencies on each other, ie they can run whether the other exists or not.

To decouple the CodeVisitor from the FileVisitor, you just remove the inheritance heirarchy (make CodeVisitor a class on its own instead of deriving from FileVisitor) and then connect the signal from FileVisitor to a slot that you add to the CodeVisitor class. If you pass a FileVisitor reference to the CodeVisitor constructor and make the connection there, you've still got coupling so you need to create the connection in the calling code, ie in main()

That's what I did. Ezust mentioned it in the Vistor Pattern chapter somewhere.

That last question got me for a duck. And all the coding & rewriting - even with the "//as previous code" to save time.

@Reanie - do you think you passed?

Would be very surprised if I do...

[Added]
I don't practice what I preach: study, work through old tut's & exam papers.

I agree with the decoupling.

Don't worry Reanie the Question5 was a thumb suck for me too.

----
"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Douglas Adams
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ..." - Louis Hector Berlioz
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.

@Rey: Not worried. It will be a nice surprise if I pass, but I only need to pass 3 of the 5 subjects I wrote, and the previous 4 didn't go "that" bad.

Ughhh - murder, murder, murder if you didn't have it all at your fingertips.
I was really running low on time, and was not expecting the given questions, at all. Didn't they say it would pretty much be straight from textbook due to the time constraint?

Well, I'd be over-the-moon if I passed, but will probably be writing the supp.

Someone posted up there about 35/70 not qualifying for a supp - as far as I'm aware if this was your last exam b4 getting degree and you did a fair share of work, they allow you to rewrite - correct me if I'm wrong...

All to do now is wait till exam results are released - when is that?

@Sar: I've also heard about the rule about being able to qualify for a supp if it's your last subject you need for your degree. But, apparently it only applies for 3rd year subjects. A friend had to redo a full year just for a 2nd year subject.

Quote

Release of Results
October/November 2009
* Final examination result letters will be printed and mailed to students as from 11/12/2009.

According to tut 304:

Quote

Supplementary examinations
The final mark for any module in the School of Computing has to be at least 40% in order to qualify for a supplementary examination in that module. Please note that the year mark is not taken into account when the final mark for a supplementary examination is calculated.

Passed. Phew. It takes real talent to write just enough to pass