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WJEC AS Computer Science - 6th June 2016

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With pseudo code it's suppose to be universal and so the [pos] had to be "n" first and then if it's greater or you just do n + 1 but if it's smaller you do n-1

hmm im not sure, maybe it'll be alright it should pick up most of the marks though

Reply 21

StarfishJ

Original post by 10SladeGV

All I had was old CG1 and CG3 textbooks that were good but not on the spec, there was also something on the Cambridge website that was **** But hey, if we all did bad, there's always the potential for the grade boundary to be low

I just had no idea they would ask about direct files in so much detail, with hashing etc. It's on the spec, but it doesn't talk about hashing or overflow on there, and we weren't taught it. Same goes for "maintenance documentation" which I still don't understand.

Reply 22

JamieNorth

[QUOTE=StarfishJ;65503983]I just had no idea they would ask about direct files in so much detail, with hashing etc. It's on the spec, but it doesn't talk about hashing or overflow on there, and we weren't taught it. Same goes for "maintenance documentation" which I still don't understand.
Maintenance is just Perfective, adaptive and corrective.

Reply 23

jwstarfish

Original post by JamieNorth

Maintenance is just Perfective, adaptive and corrective.

I see where you're coming from but they specifically asked for "maintenance documentation" - which suggests something more like this http://www.teach-ict.com/as_a2_ict_new/ocr/A2_G063/331_systems_cycle/slc_stages/miniweb/pg22.htm to me. It sucks because I'm sure that isn't on the spec.

Reply 24

username2577327

Original post by JamieNorth

Maintenance is just Perfective, adaptive and corrective.

I don't think the maintenance it meant there was related to the perfective/adaptive/corrective maintenance, it rather asked what is actually in the documentation. Could be wrong though.

Overall I thought it was a good paper! The question about the direct file access, the hashing was where an algorithm is applied to the key of the record and the result represents the address (location) in memory where the data should be stored/retrieved - in the case of data already being there it is stored in an overflow area which is accessed sequentially if memory serves me right.

Reply 25

JamieNorth

Yeah, that is correct about the hash file. With regards to maintenance. That's all we have learnt and so I just put that to attempt to gain a few marks. What 6 IDE features did you put?

Reply 26

jwstarfish

I did Autocomplete, Autoformat, Syntax Highlighting, Breakpoints, Step In and Watch Windows. Not sure whether Autoformat will be accepted though...

Reply 27

JamieNorth

[QUOTE=jwstarfish;65512185]I did Autocomplete, Autoformat, Syntax Highlighting, Breakpoints, Step In and Watch Windows. Not sure whether Autoformat will be accepted though...

I put
•Intelisence
•Syntax highlighting
•Breakpoints
•Line numbers
•Compiler
•Error list
I don't know if they're right though

Reply 28

username2577327

Original post by JamieNorth

Yeah, that is correct about the hash file. With regards to maintenance. That's all we have learnt and so I just put that to attempt to gain a few marks. What 6 IDE features did you put?

Yeah we didn't learn majorly more than you. The 6 I put we're Editor, Linker, Loader, Variable Watch, Memory Dump, and Trace/Step into

Reply 29

JamieNorth

Original post by bonney12

Yeah we didn't learn majorly more than you. The 6 I put we're Editor, Linker, Loader, Variable Watch, Memory Dump, and Trace/Step into

Yeah, I think with this exam, literally everyone was in the same boat so it will be interesting to see how the grade boundaries work out and that.

Reply 30

JamieNorth

Just out of interest, what does everyone think will be in the second paper?

Reply 31

pharmhopeful16

Compilation maybe? It didn't come up in unit 1 and it would link in with the programming

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 32

JamieNorth

Original post by pharmhopeful16

Compilation maybe? It didn't come up in unit 1 and it would link in with the programming

Posted from TSR Mobile

Oh, that's a very good shout. Flow charts will defiantly come up as well as data structure tables. What programming language do you use?

Reply 33

username2577327

Original post by JamieNorth

Oh, that's a very good shout. Flow charts will defiantly come up as well as data structure tables. What programming language do you use?

I also think questions on the data types and structures such as arrays, linked lists, records... You get my drift, will come up.

We're doing Python!

Reply 34

JamieNorth

Original post by bonney12

I also think questions on the data types and structures such as arrays, linked lists, records... You get my drift, will come up.

We're doing Python!

We're doing Visual Basic which is quite fun, but I wish we were doing Java as that's much more of a used language in the real world and it's much more powerful than VBA and Python

Reply 35

username2577327

Hmm... I think that the problem with Java is that for newbie coders it is harder to learn. I am a PHP coder and so Java is very understandable to me, though I can understand why people may find it complicated - Python is often viewed as a very good starter language so I supported that choice - it all depends on your personal preference I suppose! I am very happy that in A2 I will be able to use any coding language I desire to do the extended project, it means I can make use of my PHP knowledge fully and so the project will be very easy to do, and we checked with the examiner and apparently I can do HTML and CSS alongside it as long as it ties in with PHP (which is perfect because PHP is typically a web-based language).

Am looking forward to it either way!

Reply 36

JamieNorth

Original post by bonney12

That's only good if you want to build a website with those languages as they're all front end languages?

Reply 37

username2577327

Original post by JamieNorth

That's only good if you want to build a website with those languages as they're all front end languages?

They are frontend languages I agree and I am a web developer so other languages such as Java don't suit me as much (I know Java can be used on websites too and so can Javascript as JSP, but I find PHP a very good language to use). So whatever the project, I will make a web-based version and it should work just as well, hopefully :biggrin:

Reply 38

JamieNorth

Original post by bonney12

I don't really know much about the project next year, but I have heard that the theoritocal side makes up for around 80% of it, so if you nail the theory side you should be set for a good mark!