I've always found grasping programming to be a hard subject, i understand some of the basic theorys, but it's just a little frustrating when my lecturer doesn't really take into consideration that not EVERYONE is at the same level, thus as weeks go by, its very easy to find yourself trailing off course.
I've asked for advice from the lecturer, but received no further help, thus making me purchase and borrow books to read from.. As you can tell.. I'm not too happy!

This post was NOT intended for a quick fix for my problems within the assignment i've been given, i just need a good supportive background to help me with my assignment. I never did choose to do programming as part of my univeristy career, i know i NEED to learn it now, and believe you and me.. I've been going mad at trying to learn it.

I'm a firm believer of "You get what you give". I've given it my best shot, the very best, need pointing in the right direction.

The assignment

Write a program in VB.NET to process a series of exam marks. Input boxes are to be used for input and text boxes for output. The font of the text box should be set to Courier New (so that every character occupies the same width) and to size 8. Set ScrollBars to Both, and Multi-line to True.A single button should initiate the calculation.
For testing/debugging purposes you may also find it useful to create a button which uses the TextBox1.Clear() instruction to clear any text boxes.


Graduated Tasks - task 1 - Statistics - (10 marks)
The program should accept a series of exam marks, ended by -1. When the -1 is entered, it should display the following results in a text box, using AppendText, and it should display a "Done" message box when terminating.
Task Mark
The average (mean) mark 4
The smallest and largest mark. 3
"Great work" if at least 30% of the students passed (got 40% or above). If not, it should display "High failure rate" 3



Task 2 - Histogram - (5 marks)
You should write code to display a bar chart of the marks in another text box, as in:

----------------------------------------------------
|Mark |
|13 ************* |
|21 ********************* |
|7 ******* |
| ...etc |
| |
| |
| |
----------------------------------------------------


Do not take account of marks which don't fit across. Note that the asterisks should ideally start from the same character position.
.

Task 3 - Copying - (10 marks)
Assume that the marks have been entered in order of seating, and the lecturer suspects copying from nearby students. In the case that three adjacent students have identical marks, display the following before the average: their mark, and their three positions.
Example

Suspect mark: 51
Students numbered: 13 14 15


Do not use an array , string, file, or collection for this task. Assume that only one group of copiers exists


Program style - (6 marks)

Item Mark
Uses a procedure (sub) 2
Naming 2
Comments 2


----------------



Is there any positive and easy way to learn around this, I'm just trying to grasp the assigment..

** Again, this is in NO way a post to get the answer, just a post for at least someone with experience to point me in the right direction.

Would really appreciate if anyone would be able to offer guidence / support.

Much appreciated.