Quote Originally Posted by Paul McKenzie View Post
The average student taking C++, and especially if it's their first language, could not complete this assignment in less than a day -- believe me, I have taught C++. In the best case scenario for a good student (everything has been described to them, taught, sample programs provided, etc.). maybe a day.
I'll agree it depends on how much they've been at it. But this type of task isn't the kind of thing you'd give someone in the first few days. If it's that early on, I would have expected the assignment description to be much more detailed. Or rather, I would have expected a considerably simpler assignment.

I was sort of assuming that they had worked through the first few chapters of a course on C++ and had already done several other programs and thus be familiar with stuff like operator overloading and the c++ input/output system/streams.