Need help with my college project please.. I'm lost..

My professor doesn't really know how to teach and he teaches really fast.. I just cannot keep up with him. I took a beginners class for C++ and I did well, but now I'm just lost and frustrated that I cannot understand most of the things hes saying..
This is the first project that he asked us to do.. so I need some major help with this..if anyone willing to help me do it that would be wonderful!

Write a program that uses a class. The class definition will be in a separate header file.See documents "Example of class using separate header file" and "header file "as a guide. You will also need to make a file for data (such as employee.dat). See document "Writing to a file" on how to write to a file.The class should have private data members name, salary, years, evaluation score (which can be 1 to 10).The function members should be able to output and modify these data members.Your program should take the name, salary, years, evaluation score from the keyboard and put it into employee.dat.Then if evaluation score is greater than 8, give the person a 1% raise for every year they have worked for the company (4 yrs gets a 4% raise). If evaluation score is less than 3, 10% reduction in salary. Your program should be able to read from the data file and assign raises. Your finished product will therefore have 3 files: the application, the header (class definition), and data file. Your program should compile and run.


I'm trying to work on it as I'm posting this right now.. Hopefully by the time I get back on this forum I'd already figure it out by myself.
Thank you very much for your help in advance! Much appreciated.

BUMP
anyone? :(

READ THIS!

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Originally Posted by stateofemergency

My professor doesn't really know how to teach

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What does the teacher do that makes you believe he/she doesn't know how to teach? Programming is not for everyone, regardless of how good a teacher in programming may be, or how smart the student may be.

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and he teaches really fast..

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I'll let you in on a secret -- one reason why programming teachers teach "fast" and do not slow down for others is to quickly weed out the ones that cannot understand the material. Computer programming requires a brain that's wired in a certain way -- the person has to, from nothing, create something that consists of logical, discrete, well-defined steps. If they can't do that, then there's nothing a teacher can do to teach that, regardless of how smart the person may be in other topics. The teachers know this, and won't bother slowing down for these students.

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Write a program that uses a class. The class definition will be in a separate header file.See documents "Example of class using separate header file" and "header file "as a guide. You will also need to make a file for data (such as employee.dat). See document "Writing to a file" on how to write to a file.The class should have private data members name, salary, years, evaluation score (which can be 1 to 10).The function members should be able to output and modify these data members.Your program should take the name, salary, years, evaluation score from the keyboard and put it into employee.dat.Then if evaluation score is greater than 8, give the person a 1% raise for every year they have worked for the company (4 yrs gets a 4% raise). If evaluation score is less than 3, 10% reduction in salary. Your program should be able to read from the data file and assign raises. Your finished product will therefore have 3 files: the application, the header (class definition), and data file. Your program should compile and run.

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I see nothing in that description that would be difficult for a beginner who

1) has the aptitude to write a computer program and

2) who puts in the time to do the work.

What exactly are you having trouble with? Instead of looking at the whole assignment as one big blob, take the very first thing mentioned and attempt to write a small program that does that.

Regards,

Paul McKenzie

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The class definition will be in a separate header file

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Quote:

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The class should have private data members name, salary, years, evaluation score (which can be 1 to 10).The function members should be able to output and modify these data members

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So have you done these steps? It should take no more than 5 minutes work for a student, a minute's work for an experienced programmer.

Regards,

Paul McKenzie

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Originally Posted by stateofemergency

I took a beginners class for C++ and I did well, but now I'm just lost and frustrated that I cannot understand most of the things hes saying..

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wait, i learned how to do this stuff IN a begginners C++ book within the first four chapters, what exactly dont you know how to do??
--and that might be why he's going "so fast", you're probably already suppose to know this...

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Originally Posted by stateofemergency

BUMP
anyone? :(

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This is just a simple warm-up exercise to set the stage for the rest of the laboratory course-work.

You're supposed to be able to,

- produce a small program with a simple logic,
- compile and run it,
- introduce a class in the standard C++ way by splitting it into a .h and a .cpp file,
- read from the keyboard and write to the screen, and
- store and retrieve information from a file.

This is the bare minimum for doing anything in C++ really. It's essentially unrelated to whatever the professor may have been talking about in his lectures. So if you've had trouble understanding him it's a problem of its own but it shouldn't prevent you from completing this very trivial programming task. Especially not since you've already completed a beginner's C++ course. And especially not with all the complementary material you've been handed. And especially not since you've been admitted to a university and should be able to read and understand written instructions.

You cannot expect further pampering and spoonfeeding. You got to get down to producing something of your own. If you get stuck you're wellcome to ask specific questions. Good luck.

As has been suggested you must ask yourself whether programming suits you.

Programming is very much a craft and the only way to improve yourself is by actually writing programs. It's a hell of a struggle really. Your own program logic usually is a piece of cake but no program runs in isolation. To be successful you also must be willing to browse through tons of badly documented third-party API:s or code some moron wrote, for days and weeks and months at end to finally resolve the issues at hand.

In short, it takes an introvert of the third kind (like me :)) to put up with this whole hulabaluba. You should seriously consider whether this is something for you.