| CPSC 225 | Intermediate Programming | Spring 2025 |
Along with exams, the project interviews assess what you, individually, have mastered. The projects focus on programming skills, and the interviews complement the programming part of the projects.
This semester there will be a single interview covering the three main projects: Omino, Solitaire, and Adventure.
Note that, like exams, the project interview is required. You must attend an interview! Check your email for the signup link, and put the time you sign up for on your calendar so that you remember to attend! Please sign up as soon as possible for the best selection of times.
If you find that you can't make the time that you have signed up for, either reschedule yourself or let me know as soon as possible so that timeslot can be available to others. If you have an unavoidable conflict with all of the available timeslots, see me as soon as possible to discuss options. Otherwise the same policies apply as for exams: last minute scheduling/rescheduling will not be accommodated for something known about in advance and if there is a last-minute emergency that prevents you from attending the interview as scheduled, you must be in touch as soon as possible about arranging a makeup time.
Important requirement: You will need to have your code for the three projects available in Eclipse. Please bring a laptop set up so that you can either access your projects in Eclipse directly on the computer or that you can use to connect to the Linux VDI to access your project there. If you don't have a laptop or are unable to bring one to the meeting, please let me know in advance so that alternative arrangements can be made.
The interview will be about your projects, both the overall process and your general understanding of programming as well as the specific code and concepts in the projects. You may be asked to explain how you approached the design or coding of a project as a whole or a particular aspect of it, what problems you ran into and how you fixed them, and how you tested and debugged your program. Specific code and concept topics include explaining the overall organization of your code or a section of it, explaining specific design or implementation choices, explaining the purpose of a section of code, tracing or explaining the execution of a section of code, working out code on paper for the same or a similar task, and explaining how to accommodate small extensions or changes in the specifications.
The interview is about your experience and your code, so there's not material to study as you might for an exam. However, it's a good idea to brush up on your code to refresh your memory, especially for the earlier projects. Also make sure that you've made significant progress on all three projects — turn in Adventure on time and be making progress on the Solitaire resubmit if your handin was incomplete. If you haven't handed in an assignment, you may be asked about what you would do so you should still be familiar with the assignment and have thought about it.