Lecturers with unfair policies......

seamus

An excerpt from an email I received today, from our lecturer, regarding our last C++ assignment on Friday;

Submitting a solution that doesn't compile is pretty awful. And no, I didn't find any compile errors that were the fault of the Borland C++ compiler. "A bad workman" etc.

If you used another compiler to do this assignment, that's fine. but it has to work under Borland. You need to be a confident Borland user for the practical exam.

Now, I didn't use Borland C++ Developer to do this assignment. 2 reasons:

1. It's impossible to work in the CS labs. I get far more and better work done at home/in work.

2. Borland C++ Developer Studio is the biggest, dirtiest piece of bug-ridden ****e I've ever had the misfortune of using. It's compiler is sub-standard, and it doesn't even give useful error messages.

Of course, I wrote my solution in work and compiled it using BloodShed Dev-C++, as well as testing it with another command-line compiler I d/l'd and at home on GNU C++. With all three I got zero errors and no warnings. So I submitted it, and when college returned, I tested it on Borland. Surprise, surprise, it didn't compile. Borland complained it coudln't find the 'std' library (W..T...F?).

So, even though my code was correct and ansi-compliant, I now look bad because I didn't use the ****e compiler supplied by the college. And this isn't the first thing. This guy's lecture notes have glaring syntax errors in places, and the code he teaches is just barely, sometimes not at all, ansi-compliant.

The course is called 'Object-Oriented Programming', but essentially it's just a brush up on OOP principles, and a crash-course in C++. We all know OOP because we've been doing Java for the last 3 years.

What can I do? :mad:

Lemming

perhaps argue the point that you are not doing a course in "how to use Borland C++" but a course in "C++".

perhaps argue the point that Bloodsheed (Mingw I think isn't it using?) is a standards compliant compiler and that your code is ansi compliant. **

Maybe take the issue to the head of dept. if the lecturer continues to refuse to listen perhaps?

You could also ask him for a _detailed_ post-mortem of your assessment submission to force him to justify himself

I dunno.



** You might want to do some homework to make sure that something like this is 100% accurate before saying it.

eth0_

Same thing happened me in college (ITB). I couldn't use that bloatware boreland on my computer at home, it wasn't up to the job, so I was compiling in linux, or using the MS C++ compiler as I had a student licence, it worked fine on both, but I got hassle off the lecturer because it didn't work in Borland!

Surely Borland is wrong if it works on 2 others and is ANSI compliant!

Lemming

M$ VC++ is also somewhat notorious.

THe problem is that M$ & Borland have their own libraries

seamus

Just to clarify, the email was addressed to the class mailing list, not just me, it looks like that, having just reread my post.

I'm considering asking the class rep to at least say something, or I might forward the email to the 3rd Year Co-ordinator, citing what you said, Lemming.

I'm still a little pissed off, so I'm gonna wait a while before I do anything. And of course, in case anyone comes up with another good suggestion.

Repli

If he specified in the assignment details that you had to use borland well then he's being fair..
The same thing happened me in algorithms we had to write a program to compare different sorting methods and were told to use visual c++, silly me went and wrote the whole thing in dev-c++ (excellent compiler btw)

seamus

Nope, nowhere in the specs does it say that we must use Borland.

I have a feeling that this guy just knows C++, he doesn't actually use it on a regular basis. To suddenly say that code is incorrect if it doesn't compile using the most convienent program for him, is just plain wrong. What use is it to me if I get a job, and my code doesn't compile. "Oh I don't know ansi-C++, I know Borland C++". :mad:

Red Alert

For C programming in 1st eng we're using the CygWin / GCC environment but i still get some inconsistincies compared to when i try and compile it on GCC/Linux at home.

Just a thought: If the question used the words ANSI C and you're program's an ANSI C compatible code then it doesn't matter whether Boreland likes it or not.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Red Alert

Nope i'm using:

c++ -o (outputfilename) (inputfile.c)

on both systems.

pickarooney

Just how much work would be involved in porting it to make it Borland C++ compilable? Is it just a question of the included libraries? Can you put all the file-include LOCs in a separate header file, and write a separate header file for compilation with the Borland compiler? Surely it's only a very minor issue if the code itself works but the include files are in a different/incorect path?

Ixidor

it's that age old question come up to bite us in the ass again:

why do computers hate us all?

TomTom

battleing with a lecturer this late in the year may not be a good idea but you have a point, if they don't specify a compiler then it's there problem not yours.