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As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

nytimes.com

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Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#71

Post by glangdale »

goodroot wrote: post #50
glangdale wrote: post #23

This is hugely important as a lot of people see programming as a ticket into higher-end jobs and will spend as little time as individual contributors as they can. The idea that "oh, they'll get caught in the workforce" is not correct - quite often the plan in the mind of these folks is that they will try to fake their way through and be moved up into project management, technical marketing, etc. and never have their…

The solution is effective hiring. Work sample or project based hiring methods get people to demonstrate their skill-sets. I once had a candidate refer to resume/conversation based hiring as 'ritualized lying'. I think that's bang on. This isn't directly in response to your comment, but... There's an elitist under(over?)-tone within HackerNews that asserts any less-than-engineer technical role is inferior and attracti…

The whole "effective hiring" answer doesn't scale. I am absolutely appalled at the idea that I would have to do a 'fizzbuzz' test for a purportedly senior developer listing 'strong C/C++ skills', for example. However, that's the reality we face, and part of that reality comes from having people be comfortable with lying their way into our "profession" and us not be completely aghast when it happens.

A fake doctor or accountant is a scandal. A fake programmer is business as usual.

On the elitist over/under-tone stuff: I should have been clearer. I think PM roles, documentation roles, testing roles, etc are all extremely important. However, I don't think these are roles where you should stash incompetent and dishonest pseudo-developers; I think the odds are pretty good that someone who fakes their way through being a developer isn't going to be that good at anything else.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#72

Post by bigger_cheese »

rhodysurf wrote: post #6
jboogie77 wrote: post #3

This should be obvious to any person who tutors people online. If you check out sites like https://schoolsolver.com or https://chegg.com they have become havens for programming questions. One could make the argument that it's partly the teachers fault for reusing old programming assignments. On the other hand, especially on something like school solver, there are plenty of programmers, living in 3rd world countries,…

They were havens for traditional engineering questions when I was in college too (Dynamics, Statics, Fluids, etc). Every homework question we had seemed to be available online somewhere and it let to kids simply copying answers instead of simply learning the same material they were copying. It got so bad the whole MechEng dept at my school got rid of homework in favor of problem sets that were solved in a given class…

When I was studying eng problem sets like this were the norm for courses like statics, fluid dynamics, thermo etc. They were considered optional and you usually collaborated on them in groups - university even encouraged it by helping to advertise/organize study groups.

Mostly you'd sit in group everyone would work on problems independently then "What did you get for problem 3?" "100 kPa" "Yeah that's what I got." No different from looking up answer in back of textbook.

Our assignments in these classes (i.e what counted towards your grade) was usually based off of lab reports i.e. I remember for thermo we had to play around with heat exchangers in various configurations and then compute their efficiency based on measurements we took.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#73

Post by VHRanger »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #4

What's with the obsession with student assessment over student learning? At the end of the day the student has to perform, and there are plenty of opportunities to build up a network of people that will assert you know your stuff. Why is it that grades are still a thing at this level?

Education is both a signal to employers and an opportunity to build yourself as a person.

For some it's mostly the former, for others the latter. It depends on the majors chosen and a bunch of other factors.

The research in education is difficult to parse the individuals decision comes from which (some show that signalling does play a big part, though).

My personal opinion is that, as more people get higher education, it becomes more of a signal -- the value of the signal of the degree is lessened, and by extension, the value of not having the degree is lessened even more. See the "Spence signalling model" for more on this.

So you get dumbed down classes in the long run.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#74

Post by danso »

parennoob wrote: post #14

EDIT: My comment completely missed that there were 100 lines of identical code noticed as well. Leaving below for context. ------- Does anyone else find the example cited in the article rather flimsy? Out of 450, two students incorrectly used the inverse of a Boolean for a conditional – an error I have seen tens, if not hundreds of times. Perhaps they used better ways of detecting cheating (some are covered later in…

The two students also shared "nearly 100 identical lines of code". The `!done` was the icing on the cake.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#75

Post by chrismcb »

glangdale wrote: post #23

This is hugely important as a lot of people see programming as a ticket into higher-end jobs and will spend as little time as individual contributors as they can. The idea that "oh, they'll get caught in the workforce" is not correct - quite often the plan in the mind of these folks is that they will try to fake their way through and be moved up into project management, technical marketing, etc. and never have their…

And most of these people can't code fizzbuzz... Which is why it is so important to ask a question line that. Most of these people will also fail a whiteboard interview spectacularly.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#76

Post by chrismcb »

jdmichal wrote: post #58
glangdale wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the trajectory: Fake your way through basic CS courses. Find your way into group-work heavy projects in later years, possibly doing enough ancillary aspects of the work to be semi-useful. It will be likely that your other group members will find it easier to grin and bear it. Optionally: do a Masters or PhD. Plagiarize your work, or potentially hire someone to do it for you. Continue into the work force, focus…

I had a lecturer as a close friend in college. He was only a lecturer because he refused to do a dissertation to complete his doctorate. He was the best teacher in the department. So it goes. Anyway, he would get up in front of the staff meetings and say, the school is graduating students who do not know how to code. The school didn't care; they got paid. Every class of any import had team projects because "that's wh…

It isn't the University's job to teach people how to code. University isn't a vocational school. Yes, one should know how to code when they graduate. But the school is usually trying to teach the theory not the coding

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#77

Post by parennoob »

danso wrote: post #74
parennoob wrote: post #14

EDIT: My comment completely missed that there were 100 lines of identical code noticed as well. Leaving below for context. ------- Does anyone else find the example cited in the article rather flimsy? Out of 450, two students incorrectly used the inverse of a Boolean for a conditional – an error I have seen tens, if not hundreds of times. Perhaps they used better ways of detecting cheating (some are covered later in…

The two students also shared "nearly 100 identical lines of code". The `!done` was the icing on the cake.

Good point! I missed that and focused on the emphasized Boolean test, which is the first time I have seen any code in the NYTimes.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#78

Post by rhodysurf »

bigger_cheese wrote: post #72
rhodysurf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were havens for traditional engineering questions when I was in college too (Dynamics, Statics, Fluids, etc). Every homework question we had seemed to be available online somewhere and it let to kids simply copying answers instead of simply learning the same material they were copying. It got so bad the whole MechEng dept at my school got rid of homework in favor of problem sets that were solved in a given class…

When I was studying eng problem sets like this were the norm for courses like statics, fluid dynamics, thermo etc. They were considered optional and you usually collaborated on them in groups - university even encouraged it by helping to advertise/organize study groups. Mostly you'd sit in group everyone would work on problems independently then "What did you get for problem 3?" "100 kPa" "Yeah that's what I got." No…

That is what they changed the weekly problem sets to be... except not optional and graded before you left the session. It was a much better system, at least for me.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#79

Post by apetresc »

chrismcb wrote: post #76
jdmichal wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a lecturer as a close friend in college. He was only a lecturer because he refused to do a dissertation to complete his doctorate. He was the best teacher in the department. So it goes. Anyway, he would get up in front of the staff meetings and say, the school is graduating students who do not know how to code. The school didn't care; they got paid. Every class of any import had team projects because "that's wh…

It isn't the University's job to teach people how to code. University isn't a vocational school. Yes, one should know how to code when they graduate. But the school is usually trying to teach the theory not the coding

Let's keep it real, the cheaters aren't opting out of learning to code because they want to dedicate all that extra time to mastering the theory instead.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#80

Post by flukus »

yulaow wrote: post #39
glangdale wrote: post #23

This is hugely important as a lot of people see programming as a ticket into higher-end jobs and will spend as little time as individual contributors as they can. The idea that "oh, they'll get caught in the workforce" is not correct - quite often the plan in the mind of these folks is that they will try to fake their way through and be moved up into project management, technical marketing, etc. and never have their…

People have no idea how many times in a interview (especially with big corps) I end up talking with a PM and he tells me "Yeah, I started here already as Project Architect after my cs degree. I really don't like coding or anything related so I never do it, I focus on architecture and guide the others". And then I mentally run away.

This is a fantastic was to end up with a code base 15 layers deep with each layer converting the properties of one object to properties on another object. It sure looks pretty in architecture diagrams though.
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