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As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

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Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#151

Post by raphman »

wayn3 wrote: post #123
raphman wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In germany, what you call cheating isnt even considered cheating. Having taught computer science and HCI courses for ten years at German (Bavarian) universities, I can not agree. Of course, some professors/groups are more interested in finding and addressing plagiarism than others. However, I have only once encountered a professor who didn't really care about a plagiarised thesis. In general, addressing cheating is…

I'm not talking about Theses. I'm talking about "übungszettel". I'm aware of the fact that bavaria takes a bit of a harsher stance on this. In Heidelberg, nobody gives even the slightest crap about "cheating". But as I said, it isn't considered cheating anyway. Students are expected to collaborate on these things.

> I'm not talking about Theses. I'm talking about "übungszettel".

Sorry for the confusion. While I mentioned theses in passing, my statements were about programming assignments in undergraduate courses where students were expected to turn in individual, original work.

> I'm aware of the fact that bavaria takes a bit of a harsher stance on this.

I'm actually not aware of this fact. In my experience, how cheating is addressed depends much more on the stance of the individual professor than on that of the university or federal state. Extrapolating from your experience at one department within one university to all universities in Germany seems audacious.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#152

Post by TeMPOraL »

kurtisc wrote: post #149
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 can't understand the mindset of someone who would go to all these lengths just to be employed at something they don't understand at even the most basic level. Those same people skills could make them a lot of money in sales without all the grief.

I suppose sales is already overcrowded with those people, so some of them expand to "greener pastures".

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#153

Post by salesguy222 »

humanrebar wrote: post #97
glangdale wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> A fake doctor or accountant is a scandal. A fake programmer is business as usual. I generally agree with your points, but people don't die or go to jail because of bad code. With a few exceptions. And in those exceptions there are additional checks (checklists upon checklists, rigorous testing gauntlets) to prevent buggy code from causing safety issues. Technically underqualified people typically result in missed d…

As a foil to your claim that people don't die from bad code:

In 1999, when the US was engaging in a bombing campaign in Serbia against "military targets" that were staffed by civilians, the US bombed the Chinese Embassy, killing several and injuring dozens of civilians.

The US later "apologizied" by saying "sorry, we programmed the coordinates improperly."

Now, I'm not sure if that means some CIA intern college kid task monkey supplied the wrong coordinates to the bomb programmer, or if the bomb programmer typed the (correct) coordinates improperly.

But, software absolutely does kill people when wielded by lazy, incompetent, and often, diploma-holding programmers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the...

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#154

Post by kurtisc »

Houshalter wrote: post #93
wayn3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In germany, what you call cheating isnt even considered cheating. On homework, we openly collaborated and handed in near duplicates without trying to hide it. Some students would just copy the work of others. None of this mattered. Nobody "went after" it. It just gets graded, you get your points and you move on. Most people accept the fact that grades don't matter, but you need them for your resume. For some reason,…

Would you be alarmed if you found out your doctor had entirely cheated their way through medical school and knew very little medicine? Great, you figured out that grades aren't a perfect metric. But so what? Grades don't prove a student is great, but they can eliminate a lot of students that are bad. If the bad students just cheat their way through, everyone else down the line suffers for it.

Is it cheating for a professional software developer to use Stack Overflow? If they copy and paste, perhaps, but not if they use it to get a better understanding of something. It's very difficult to grade understanding.

Doctors go through a lot to graduate. Universities are welcome to put all students through the same level of scrutiny, working closely with a professional who can decide if they are unfit for the course.

Aside from thesis defences, they usually choose not to, because contact hours are prohibitively more expensive than a room full of exams and a few TAs.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#155

Post by skookumchuck »

JustFYI wrote: post #143
dasmoth wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think employers have a degree of responsibility here. Ultimately, they're the ones who've taken projects that ought to be within the capabilities of single individual hackers and said "this needs a team of six and a project manager". Thus transforming the project from principally technical (or tech + requirements gathering) into one of those highly-political group work exercises.

Employers don't need to take responsibility. All they need to do is to think about income. If they can bill the customer for an employee's "work" it doesn't matter to them whether the employee can actually do anything or not. This is common practice in the IT industry.

I don't know about companies, but I have a tendency to not pay a contractor's bill if he didn't deliver the work as agreed.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#156

Post by kurtisc »

flukus wrote: post #125
c0rruptbytes wrote: post #22

anyone who relies on cheating never seems to do well during the harder major courses at my school (Texas). A lot of the professors have really rigorous cheating detections, and will make you explain every line of code in person if they suspect something. (At least in honor classes) Also, I don't know what these people expect when they have to do a technical interview?

> Also, I don't know what these people expect when they have to do a technical interview? They probably don't know they exist, they're fairly unique to our industry. They probably expect interviews to be just like everywhere else, all smiles and dressing well, with generic "when have you been challenged in life" questions. A lot of them will get hired by big corporates that don't do code tests too, that's why even pe…

Every form of engineering will have technical interviews.

I imagine a lot of them use their degree as a ticket to a non-technical job.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#157

Post by majewsky »

Nition wrote: post #128
apetresc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The real problem is, the idealised goal of a university should be "learn something", but it's actually "get a degree".

Another case of "Once you turn a metric into a goal, it ceases being a good metric".

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#158

Post by tsukikage »

flukus wrote: post #80
yulaow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As in code, so in organisations: somewhere in the stack some entity must actually do some work, or the whole will not function.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#159

Post by flukus »

ec109685 wrote: post #141
flukus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it also the University of Sydney that recently made graduates take their tests in English and checked their ID before taking the test? I think some students sued after a 90% failure rate. So many degrees are as valuable as toilet paper.

What language were they asking Australians to take their exams in before?

I may be confusing multiple issue, I've heard there are tonnes of Chinese tutors and worked with graduates that couldn't write/speak English to save themselves. I'm not sure if that's allowed on tests.

I can't remember the exact change they made for the testing though, it was in the news a couple of years ago.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#160

Post by varjag »

salesguy222 wrote: post #153
humanrebar wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A fake doctor or accountant is a scandal. A fake programmer is business as usual. I generally agree with your points, but people don't die or go to jail because of bad code. With a few exceptions. And in those exceptions there are additional checks (checklists upon checklists, rigorous testing gauntlets) to prevent buggy code from causing safety issues. Technically underqualified people typically result in missed d…

As a foil to your claim that people don't die from bad code: In 1999, when the US was engaging in a bombing campaign in Serbia against "military targets" that were staffed by civilians, the US bombed the Chinese Embassy, killing several and injuring dozens of civilians. The US later "apologizied" by saying "sorry, we programmed the coordinates improperly." Now, I'm not sure if that means some CIA intern college kid t…

Pretty sure operational missile targeting isn't done by programmers.
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