Hi Terry,
I had an online user's guide in my submission. No, I don't think it's worth doing, especially since the instructions explicitly say you don't have to. I really think
you should take the instructions at face-value. I think too many people, myself included, have read the instructions that say you may do this or that and think that if you do the more complicated thing that somehow that earns you more points. I really feel that is probably a mistaken notion. I've come to believe that what Sun really wants is for you to do the minimal amount of work, but to do that minimal amount of work really well.
I regard an online user's guide as not essential to the core requirements of the assignment. If you want to do it for the experience or for fun, then by all means do it, just don't expect to be rewarded with a higher score. I think I could have taken half as long on the assignment if I had adopted this view from the beginning.
I think there's an example of someone passing the exam with something like two weeks of work. If I'm willing to accept that as true, then I must come to the conclusion that he did the minimum that was required (but he must have done that really well). Even if this person is exaggerating or happens to be an exceptionally fast designer/coder, it just seems to me that in two weeks time he couldn't have implemented much beyond the "musts" in the assignment instructions. It follows from that Sun (or at least the grader in this case) wasn't really looking for bells and whistles and the absence of bells and whistles didn't cause the candidate to lose many (if any) points.
Hope this helps,
George
[ January 13, 2004: Message edited by: George Marinkovich ]