mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard) (07/25/88)
From article <2920@utastro.UUCP>, by nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather): > Perhaps > your students would benefit from a course on how to "cheat" -- how to find > and use code someone else has written and debugged. That's what ALL > professional programmers do if they can manage it. Yes, but the professional programmers [hopefully] UNDERSTAND the code they're lifting, and could presumably produce it form scratch if needed. And how would they acquire the expertise to do that? Perhaps having to write code whilst in school? > more power to them! They'll have > no trouble finding a job. Well, if the interviewer asks "What's the most effective way to lift someone's disks from their dorm room without getting caught," you're right they'll have no trouble. If, on the other hand, she says, "Tell me about your experience implementing deadlock resolution schemes," the results may be a bit different. In a high-pressure university environment, time is a valuable commodity. The temptation to cut corners is strong, and the potential rewards for doing so are great. Any attempts to raise the perceived costs of doing so, benefit everyone. ---------------------- When I was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon, an intro computing course [supposedly] used an automatic code-similarity detector. It was effective against cheating for two reasons: 1) Many undergrads are amazingly stupid cheaters. It's bizarre how many people take their roommate's code and change the variable names and think they can get away with it. 2) The widespread rumor that such a program was being used was, itself, a powerful deterrent. Maybe it was only diff(1). Maybe it didn't exist at all. But who wants to risk suspension to find out? -- unsigned *Wayne_Mesard(); MESARD@BBN.COM BBN, Cambridge, MA "When Martin Sheen visited me, he was smoking again after his heart attack, and I asked why. He said, 'It is my friend it is always there and doesn't pass judgment.' I said, 'Your friend is going to kill you.'" - Larry King