Disbelief and Floating-Point Variables.

I'm dubious. About what, Jacob? I hear you cry. Don't cry. Well, I've thought long and hard, and I'm dubious about exam boards. Oh. Well, quite, and I'm aware that all of what I'm about to say is slightly tenuous and even more slightly boring, so I'll get to the point.

Essentially, I took computing, for my sins, and if not then for the sins of some unknown ancestor of mine, sins the Universe has only ever recently been able to settle through some perverse version of inherited karma. I say only recently because until recently (for some sins) there simply wasn't enough bad stuff in the world to pile onto the judgement day bandwagon before it was pushed off the cliff onto the relevant sinner* with sufficient load to provide enough heathen punch in order that the bastard be payed back. Computing tipped the balance, in a manner of speaking, and is now a handy fallback for any supernatural deity wishing to find a modern-day lightning bolt of sufficient magnitude. It's sorted out a lot of problems, I can tell you.

Okay, I admit I may be slightly over-exaggeration my dislike for the subject. A lot of it I find interesting and worthwhile. There is one thing in particular that irritates me however, and that's just everyone involved with the subject's formidable ability to show off**. You're going to have to take my word because I need to move on relatively quickly, but they really can blow their own trumpet, trombone and national ukelele ensemble all at once, and it gets worse when they get together and form, hey, an exam board, or something like that. An exam board so possessed by its own power high that it sets compulsory page numbering styles throughout all controlled assessments, eats babies, and worst, worst of all it constantly constantly brags about its omniscient, mentioned-only-in-whispers-and-also-shouted-loudly-about-moderately-regularly indestructible plagiarism machine. Now I'm against plagiarism, as it tends to mean that while my work is still perfect to the syllable, so is everyone else's, which somewhat spoils the effect (not arrogant. Not arrogant). However, irritating *** is the reminder each lesson that our work will be fed through the matrix and if we've used any words that we didn't invent ourselves our computer will explode, throwing fragments of LCD into our vile, undeserving eyes. Nothing has been explained about this machine aside from it checking the entire Internet for any slight matches with our writing. What I don't doubt is that software such as this exists, there are brilliant people out there who've created amazing things and this seems like an extremely useful and perfectly realistic one. What I refuse to believe is that something as crappy as Edexcel has one. It would be entirely wrong for something mediocre to have at association with something so cool. And  so if you're out there listening, I'm calling you bluff. Please find enclosed the entirety of my Computing controlled assessment task 3. Enjoy, and if I feel a sudden sharp sensation around the eyelids, well. I'll go a bit red. Very red.

Program CA3;
Uses Crt, Sysutils;
Var BinString1, BinString2, BinSum: string;
x, y, z, i, w, a, error: integer;
Begin ClrScr;
          Writeln('Enter binary string 1');
          Readln(BinString1);
          Writeln('Enter binary string 2');
          Readln(BinString2);
          For i:=0 to length(BinString1) do
          Begin
                    Val(BinString1[length(BinString1)-i], a, error);
                    x:=x+trunc(exp(ln(2)*i)*a);
          End;
          For i:=0 to length(BinString2) do
          Begin
                    Val(BinString2[length(BinString2)-i], a, error);
                    y:=y+trunc(exp(ln(2)*i)*a);
          End;
          z:=x+y;
          w:=z;
          While (z<>0) do
          Begin
                    BinSum:= (IntToStr(z mod 2) + BinSum);
                    z:= z div 2;
          End;
          If (w=0) then
          Writeln('Addition gives zero');
          If (w<>0) then
          Writeln('Addition gives ' + IntToStr(z));
          Readln;
End.

Come at me.
                    

*'s descendant
**Apart from my dad. But then, he doesn't set me exams, so maybe I wouldn't notice if he did.
***I'm not sure why it sets me on edge. I'd love to say it was the insult and patronisation, but that's fair enough. Now that I'm at the bottom of the page I feel slightly better about considering the possibility that my incandescent fury has to some extent been summoned my Miss confiscating my sandwich last lesson, while telling us about the machine. Hmmm...