In my experience in writing code on paper for a grade, the most helpful thing was to know the syntax of the language as best I could. Personally, I feel confident in my ability to write a problem solution in just about any language I'm familiar with, but I'm not always 100% certain of the syntax. I don't know about you, but I had several profs who seemed to be more interested in dinging me points for missing a semicolon than for correctly solving the question. There's no greater frustration than getting a paper back with a lower grade because you should have made your input parameter const, even though your algorithm is correct.

Isn't Matlab the software with the suspiciously Pascal-like syntax? If that's the one, my sympathies.

Guildenstern
Negaterd character class uber alles!

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