(no subject)

Gifford is really pissing me off. This past weekend, we had an assignment in Unix -- make a makefile that compiled a program provided to us. He even gave us the commands to compile them with. After submitting it, correcting, etc., I got a 28/40. Among the points that were taken off, 8 were deducted for a failure to make the program given no arguments. Which came as a surprise to me, since my makefile did make the program without arguments on the lab machines. Since this was auto-graded with the Curator (which Gifford has screwed up before), I emailed him explaining the situation. He replied with a comment to read the spec, which I did. As far as I could see, the spec was fulfilled. I replied back to that effect. He then shows me the makefile his Curator script expected. The difference was that I put separate make commands in my all target; he did a dependency list. But the end result was still the same, and the spec didn't specify how I was supposed to make the program without arguments (as long as it worked), so I replied back saying that, as far as I was concerned, I had fulfilled the spec. He hasn't gotten back to me yet.

I don't think that he's going to reply favorably, and, frankly, I'm very annoyed I had to argue it with him this far. I can't be expected to fulfill unwritten specs. Why should it be different here? IMHO, he's just being an asshole about the whole thing. In any case, I am seriously considering going to see Dr. Kafura, the department chair, about this. I was willing to tolerate some of these shenanigans, but it's gone too far. And I want my 8 points back, dammit.

Update: He replied with "The spec did not guarantee that the makefile would be named makefile or Makefile." Putting aside the fact that it did, what the hell kind of response is that?

(no subject)

I finally figured out what Gifford meant by his last comment. It turns out that I was wrong after all. Sorry for venting at you all.