I’m almost done with my job as a grader for this quarter, so I feel like it’d be a good time to reflect a bit on what makes code good or bad. Good coding style means it is easily humanly readable, well documented/commented, and efficient. If you don’t know how to do something or know you’re having problems with a particular function/block of code, throw a comment in there to that effect and describe why it fails/is a hack/is iffy at best! It’s ok to leave debug code in, but surround it in #ifdef’s and document that as well – at the very least, note it as being for debug. You can take that a step farther by actually documenting what your debug code is doing. Sometimes, you just can’t get a solution (run out of time, bad day, too complicated of a scope, etc). That’s ok with me, but at least explain your thought process. Sometimes that’s interesting to see – maybe I can give you some points because you were on the right track but just don’t have enough exposure to the language. Take this for example (I did actually receive a submission quite similar to this):

 1 //getValues(**a, **b, &c); DIDN"T WORK!!!!
 2 //getValues(**a, *b, &c); DIDN"T WORK AGAIN!!!!
 3 //getValues(*a, *b, &c); BAHHHHHHHHH WHY>
 4 //getValues(a,b,c); i don’t get it. why god, why?
 5 //getValues(a,b,&c) JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN VALUES ALREADY!!!
 6 //giveUP() - sorry… please don’t take points off :) 
 7 //The use of this function doesn’t really have anything to do 
 8 //with the course material. This is just a stupid c function. 
 9 //I understand the course
10 //... [clip]

So, please, use good coding style for anything you do. Comment the heck out of your code. Another thing I highly suggest – actually look at the compiler’s output. It will save you a lot of headaches if you just suck it up and read it.