Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

I had my first long exam for the term today, held in my class of Computer Circuit Fundamentals.

The students were already used to my seating arrangements, the class being surprised that two of them were not placed in front anymore, while another who is usually near the back was told to sit in the first row – the assumption being those are the ones the teacher wants to keep in close check against cheating.

The exam had three questions/programs. The first was the conversion from flowchart to assembly code, which was actually just accepting four one's and/or zero's, rejecting all other key presses, then counting and displaying the numbers of one's and zero's.

I also asked them to provide the two prompts for the output, and as a bonus, give some sample inputs and outputs as well, which I had said before I would ask them.

This question, by the way, was worth thirty points. The next two were forty points each.

These were the assembly codes with checkpoints provided, for which they had to give the execution table.

There were those who approached me during the exam asking about the input, which was actually provided by the loop counter in the programs themselves and not from the user.

From what I have seen, most of the students are not aware that using the loop command already automatically decrements the loop counter until it is zero, then will stop execution.

The first program started with a value of 1 in one register, converted this to ASCII, displayed this on the screen, then used the shift left command on the register.

Thus, in the loop's four executions, the program will display to the screen the values 1, 2, 4 and 8.

In the second program, four jump commands (equal, not equal, carry, not carry) after the compare command were used to divide the numbers 1 to 9 into four sets.

They were also asked to identify the four sets, besides giving the flowchart of the four programs.

We would have extended the exam time, but three of the students had classes immediately afterwards, so I just made the exam questions into a group problem set that is due for submission in three days' time.

Session 1663 didn't study because the exam was open notes. Class dismissed.