Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!bulko
From: bulko@cs.utexas.edu (Bill Bulko)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: looking for cheating detectors
Message-ID: <3051@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 25 Jul 88 14:19:31 GMT
References: <4513@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <2927@utastro.UUCP>
Sender: news@cs.utexas.edu
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 50

In article <2927@utastro.UUCP> nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
> It's what they'll do
>when they grow up, and it isn't called "cheating."  It's called "smart
>programming."

Ed, I don't agree with your viewpoint that students in programming
classes should not be expected "to reinvent the wheel" and should not
be prohibited from borrowing code from other students.  I think you're
missing the point of homework assignments.
     Your main argument has been that in the real world, reusing code is
a normal and smart thing to do.  This may be true, but doing an assignment
for a programming class is NOT the real world.  What would happen if
elementary school children were allowed to use calculators in their
arithmetic classes?  [Note:  "arithmetic", not "algebra".]  They'd never
learn to add and subtract, that's what.  Sure, they'll be using calculators
when they grow up, but that's no excuse for not learning how to do
arithmetic in the first place.
     Programming is an acquired skill.  You improve with practice, just
like reading, writing, and arithmetic.  The intended purpose of these
programming assignments is to have the student practice writing a program
from scratch:  to design, plan, and debug.  Borrowing code defeats this
purpose.
     In your defense, I think this discussion should clarify exactly what
classes we're talking about.  If we're talking about first-year programming
classes, then I think you're dead wrong:  students have to learn how to
program by themselves sometime.  However, if we're talking about upper-division
or graduate classes, then I concede a few inches to you:  by then, a student
shouldn't be expected to write every sort algorithm or stack utility from
scratch, when a great amount of time and paper has been spent documenting the
most efficient ways to do these things.  The difference here, though, is that
the student is expected to have already learned how to write this stuff by
himself already (probably in the first-year classes I'm talking about) and
that writing these routines would NOT be the main point of the homework.

     If that still isn't what you're talking about, then I can't support you.
Why in the world would anyone write a simple Pascal compiler for his compiler
class when he can simply "borrow" a working one?

					Bill

_______________________________________________________________________________
	     Artificial Intelligence:  the art of making computers
		      that behave like the ones in movies
Bill Bulko						The University of Texas
bulko@cs.utexas.edu				Department of Computer Sciences
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
	     Artificial Intelligence:  the art of making computers
		      that behave like the ones in movies
Bill Bulko						The University of Texas