Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
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Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
#2Wow, that would be incredibly devastating if you had to take it over again. not everyone is able to devote weeks of their lives to these things.
Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
#3This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users.
I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) had been made reliable over the years through sheer brute force as opposed to principled engineering. But in the latter case, as we saw with New Jersey's unemployment system, that "reliability" was fragile and contingent on the current state of affairs, and had no hope of withstanding a sudden shift in usage patterns.
Now we have various organizations - governmental and otherwise - hastily setting up online versions of essential services and it seems like every single one of them breaks on arrival.
We need some sort of standard for software engineering quality. I don't think this is an academic question anymore. Real people's lives are being impacted every day now by shoddy software, and with the current crisis they often have no alternative. Software that you or I could probably have executed better, but that the people who were hired to do it either a) couldn't, or b) didn't bother. It's nearly impossible for non-technical decision makers in these orgs to evaluate the quality of the systems they've hired people to build. We need quality assurance at an institutional level.
If not governmental, maybe an organization around this could be made by developers themselves. Not the "certified for $technology" certifications we have now, but a certification of fundamental software engineering skills and principles. A certification you can lose if you do something colossally irresponsible. At the end of the day, this dilution of quality is having a negative impact on our job field, so it concerns all of us. It leads to technical debt, micro-management, excessively rigid deadlines and requirements, which we all have to deal with. All of these are either symptoms of or coping mechanisms for management's inability to evaluate engineering quality.
Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
#4I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says:
> iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app
I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari not smart enough to do the same conversion?
Or was the portal programmed badly or in a non-standard way that that couldn't happen? Or is there a way to do it that the developers ignored?
Just curious for the technical details of who's more to blame here -- Apple not providing enough backwards compatibility, or the testing portal being designed poorly.
Because blaming students for not following obscure instructions to change their phone's overall configuration is not the right path. A national testing portal ought to support the default image format taken by the world's most popular phone, period.
Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
#5> The College Board is now allowing test-takers who have issues submitting their tests to email them instead
Crazy there wasn’t an email to reach out teachers before. Any exam I passed with a computer or online component always had a way to contact the prof in case something goes wrong.
Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
#6This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…
> who were hired to do it either a) couldn't, or b) didn't bother
Or c) told the decision makers that it would take longer than a few hours to do and were told not to "waste" any time on it.
Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
#7This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…
> who were hired to do it either a) couldn't, or b) didn't bother Or c) told the decision makers that it would take longer than a few hours to do and were told not to "waste" any time on it.
Regardless, there's this contentious relationship between decision makers and engineers because the former can't properly evaluate the work of the latter. Because of this, they either a) let bad engineers get away with stuff they shouldn't, or b) over-compensate and refuse to trust good engineers. It's a lose-lose.
Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
#8I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…
Probably not. If I Airdrop photos taken on my phone to my Macbook they arrive in HEIC format. I have to use an external tool (iMazing HEIC Converter) to manually convert them for a bunch of places.
Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
#9This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…
We keep making a bunch of products where protocols and existing software would do just fine, while hitting fewer edge cases.
Know what would be better than the ten goddamn apps and the iPad and shit they're using for our kid's school? Mailed (or emailed) worksheet packets with guidance, recorded lessons on Youtube. Mail back the worksheets, have the food-delivering schoolbuses pick them up, drop them off at the school every week or so, or just do photos-to-PDF on a phone and email them. Or they could just give each kid workbooks and textbooks like they did when I was in school but that's out of fashion now for no reason. eyeroll
Several logins to manage. Apps that erase your work if you hit the wrong thing. Weird interfaces. Jank galore. Just use the fucking basics. You don't need a custom app for every single thing. Email exists. Use it.
Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images
#10This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…
I don't know.. I don't think we can do better than we are already. At least not at anything close to current cost.
In the case described in the article it's arguable whether the testing software was even the culprit.