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From: lindsay@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Lindsay Groves)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: formatting
Message-ID: <1989Oct17.225819.21489@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: 17 Oct 89 22:58:19 GMT
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Sender: news@comp.vuw.ac.nz (News Admin)
Reply-To: lindsay@taputeranga.comp.vuw.ac.nz (Lindsay Groves)
Organization: Dept of Comp Sci, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ.
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This discussion seems to have strayed somewhat from the original question
(what a surprise!), which was to do with whether someone grading student
assignments should deduct marks because the program, though indented in a
consistent manner, was not indented in the way the instructor specified.

The short answer to the question is:  If you are doing grading, you do it the 
way the instructor tells you to.  If his instructions aren't clear, go back
and ask him.

Most of the discussion has addressed the broader issue of whether it is
"right" to penalise students for not conforming to a particular indenting
standard.  There have been various arguments for and against, most of which
make sense in their own context -- but that is often not the context in which
the original question was asked.

I would argue that it depends what kind of course you are teaching and what it
is you really want students to learn.  In an introductory course, the main
aim is to get students to understand the principles of algorithmic problem
solving and to learn a programming language so that they can express solutions
to problems in that language.  I this kind of course, I tell students that it
is important to lay programs out well so that they are readable, I present all
of my programs in a consistent style (not necessarily the same as their text
book), but I would not deduct marks because they did not follow my style or
any other -- only if their programs were difficult to read.

Making them adhere to a particular style at this stage seems to be emphasising
the wrong things.  All of the arguments about standards and having several
people working on the same program are pretty much irrelevant to someone who
is just learning to program.  I even think it is a good thing for them to
think about different styles and play around a bit to see what they like.

When they get on a bit and take software engineering courses and do group
projects -- then they will come to appreciate the value of standards.  In this
kind of course, I tell them about coding standards in lectures and let them
decide what standards (if any) to follow in their project.  They then learn
fast, because it more relevant and more meaningful to them.  At that point (if
not before) they should also be introduced to software tools such as
reformatters.  (The difficulties of applying patches to reformatted programs
is hardly relevant to students just learning to program!)

Another angle on this is that instead of using formatters to tidy up source
files after you've created them, we should be using editors which know enough
about the language to do the indenting etc.  Several universities in NZ are
using LightSpeed Pascal on Macs (we are probably going to go that way next
year).  LightSpeed does all the indenting for you, so the question of
deducting marks for incorrectly formatter programs goes away entirely.  This
means that students can concentrate on the things they are really supposed to
be learning!