[yareally]

I have a friend I've mentored through their CS degree and they're now a grader for a course. They tell me constantly about some students they have to give zeros to because their simple assignments (2nd level programming course) do not compile.

If one knows they will get zero if it does not compile (and they make this clear in the course), then I would be doing everything to remove code until it does compile and hope for some points versus none. I've seen some of the code snippets and it's just as bad as one would think. One person even wrote rude output statements when a user entered the wrong info (i.e. calling the person an "idiot" and such). Ironically, this person's code also did not compile.