Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watcgl!imax!dave
From: dave@imax.com (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Bezier
Message-ID: <1990Mar18.150238.2989@imax.com>
Date: 18 Mar 90 15:02:38 GMT
References: <9003141916.AA24614@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <204@usna.NAVY.MIL> <1990Mar17.025303.17752@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: dave@imax.com (Dave Martindale)
Organization: Imax Systems Corporation, Oakville Ontario
Lines: 35

In article <1990Mar17.025303.17752@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> elf@dgp.toronto.edu (Eugene Fiume) writes:
>
>.  As to the more general issue that Professor Rogers addresses (that of
>people doing their homework based on submissions from the net), I suggest that
>it's no more dishonest than those who consult a book to solve their graphics
>homework.  Both may be dishonest practices, but they're equally so.

Different courses have different standards of ethics.  In many courses
I've been in, it was considered OK (even expected) that you'd go look
at reference books to help understand an algorithm, but that you were
then actually supposed to implement it yourself - borrowing code from
other students was not considered OK.

I believe the reasoning was that you were supposed to do the assignment
not so that you could have a working assignment, but to demonstrate that
you knew how to implement a particular algorithm, or make use of a
particular set of library routines.  So any reference that helped to
understand the algorithm was OK, while any that helped you bypass
learning the algorithm was cheating.

In this sort of environment, asking USENET for help in understanding
an algorithm would be OK, while asking for code would not.  But this
is all relative to the "ethical standards" set out for the course,
which can be different for different courses and different professors.
Unless we know that, we can't judge whether a request is improper.
(It may be impolite or wasteful, but that's another issue).

(philosophical comment:)
It's so much more practical being a Researcher instead of a poor Student.
Researchers are allowed to use as much of other people's code as they
want, and to give their own code to other Researchers.  So much of
being a Student is demonstrating that you can reproduce yourself the
work that someone else has already done better.  I'm glad I'm not
a Student anymore.  (so why am I thinking of becoming one again
someday?)