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From: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Automatic Grading of Student Programs
Message-ID: <836@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Apr-87 10:12:35 EST
Article-I.D.: xanth.836
Posted: Thu Apr 16 10:12:35 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 10:07:40 EST
References: <1365@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> <818@xanth.UUCP> <1104@rpics.RPI.EDU>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Distribution: na
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 56
Keywords: Followup to:  Let the students do their own grading!
Summary: Exact output from programs is a necessary skill.

> = Dave McIntyre
>> = me

In article <1104@rpics.RPI.EDU> mcintyre@rpics.RPI.EDU (David McIntyre) writes:
>In article <818@xanth.UUCP>, kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>> First, his assignments are very explicit.  The required results are an exact
>> string of bytes (including newlines as appropriate) which the student
>> program must send to stdout.
>
>	While forcing the students to have exactly the same output might
>make the grading much easier, I think that such policies prevent the
>students from having any good ideas as far as input and output.
>	The programming student should be encouraged to not only choose
>the best algorithms to solve a problem, but also should be encouraged to
>find the best input and output formats for a problem.  Let's not stifle
>a student's creative impulses.
>
>
>-- 
>Dave "mr question " McIntyre
>	
>seismo!rpics!mcintyre
>mcintyre@csv.rpi.edu

While output for some few printed reports might be acceptable as free form, I
have found  over 26 years of programming that most of my program output was
required for creating data base records, graphic data representation,
communication packets, and so forth, all requiring bit perfect output.  I have
no quarrel with allowing creativity, but exact programming is also a necessary
skill.  Requiring students, for example, to recognize and locate white
space inadvertantly included at the ends of lines lets them learn such skills
as looking at their data in more than one way (hex or octal dumps are a real
revelation to many beginning CS students), and walking through their code with
an interactive debugger.  Once learned, these skills give the new user a
justifyable feeling of having mastered the machine.  It is a shame if a CS
major graduates without ever acquiring this level of self confidence, or
without ever having met a requirement that the output of a program be perfect.

We have enough buggy programs from poor programmers in circulation.  Please
don't be so liberal that you won't consider means of reversing this trend.
< 0.5 * ;-) >  Thanks again for your attention.

Kent.

--
The Contradictor	Member HUP (Happily Unemployed Programmers)    // Also
								      // A
Back at ODU to learn how to program better (after 25 years!)	  \\ // Happy
								   \// Amigan!
UUCP  :  kent@xanth.UUCP   or    ...{sun,cbosgd,harvard}!xanth!kent
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Voice :  (804) 587-7760    USnail:  P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Va 23501-1559

Copyright 1987 Kent Paul Dolan.			How about if we keep the human
All Rights Reserved.  Author grants free	race around long enough to see
retransmission rights, recursively only.	a bit more of the universe?