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Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

pulkitsharma07.github.io

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Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#61

Post by calibas »

> The prevalence of extreme signalling brews the classic and infamous herd mentality in our minds. In middle school children have dreams to become a Pilot in the airforce, or maybe a Police officer, or maybe a Opera Singer ! But by the time of high school, everyone is just either on road to become an Engineer, a Doctor, a Lawyer, a Chartered Accountant …. or a failure. This may seem harsh but that’s how most of the society operates here in India.

Sounds remarkably similar to how I was raised here in the US.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#62

Post by rtx »

compscistd wrote: post #55
rbecker wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He got them [old exams] through his campus Indian student group. Only shared with fellow Indians?

Yep, it was the official Indian student group registered on campus. Nothing wrong with the association itself, but a large subset of it were Bio majors so I’d imagine that’s how many were involved.

Why is studying based on previous years questions cheating. Dont we do the same with white board interviews?

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#63

Post by [deleted] »

arebhaibhai wrote: post #58
didibus wrote: post #38

A lot of places have societies where culturally the game is about getting ahead of others. You're all together in a society competing for the top spots. Whereas certain other cultures are more about working together to create an ideal environment for all to be emancipated and enjoy life to its fullest. Personally, I prefer the latter, as it just seems much more enjoyable and fun to live in such a culture. The former…

There sure is a difference about always working on own happiness and family/parents happiness. Both are stressful at times and both are rewarding at times. One might feel like foolish and other one just selfish but there is lot more overlap than you think. But then you don't see so many old age home types of things in the latter. It's just culture where people care more for others happiness than their own. One exampl…

[deleted]

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#64

Post by [deleted] »

monksy wrote: post #26
ssivark wrote: post #10

I’ll duplicate a comment I made on another thread today. This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source , to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience to understand the culture and the…

I'm not sure if you get it. India has a lot of people, some terrible infrastructure, has high amounts of competition, and the idea of craftsmanship is incredibly rare. Their value for life is much lower. There's just too many people. The idea of a pedestrian lights is a tourist thing. They don't pay attention to it. Have 8 rows of cars on the road per each side? How do you cross? You just walk across it during traffi…

[deleted]

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#65

Post by ukd1 »

whitenoice wrote: post #53
gautamcgoel wrote: post #20

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

Please. Being a doctor is boring? It is challenging to be a doctor, and it is almost impossible to cheat through the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Exam) process. It is a 3 step process, which includes four tough exams taken at registered centers, which are actively monitored. I'm saying this as a spouse of a physician who has gone through the journey, and the amount of work they put in through their med school, USMLE,…

From the outside it does seem boring; a lot of rote learning and not a lot of flexibility once you're out, high risk of getting sick and or sued. 99.99% or more Doctors are not House.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#66

Post by abhisuri97 »

compscistd wrote: post #55
rbecker wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He got them [old exams] through his campus Indian student group. Only shared with fellow Indians?

Yep, it was the official Indian student group registered on campus. Nothing wrong with the association itself, but a large subset of it were Bio majors so I’d imagine that’s how many were involved.

Just FYI, this is far more prevalent than is implied in this thread and not tied to a particular nationality/subgroup of people on college campuses. Established clubs, fraternities, sororities, arts/performing groups, and even niche majors/honors programs all tend to accumulate "academic resources" (i.e. past exams + homework) as members take courses over the years.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#67

Post by zanny »

calibas wrote: post #61

> The prevalence of extreme signalling brews the classic and infamous herd mentality in our minds. In middle school children have dreams to become a Pilot in the airforce, or maybe a Police officer, or maybe a Opera Singer ! But by the time of high school, everyone is just either on road to become an Engineer, a Doctor, a Lawyer, a Chartered Accountant …. or a failure. This may seem harsh but that’s how most of the s…

It seems the more unequal the society the more pressure there is on children to "beat the odds" to avoid languishing in poverty by being useful to capital in some way.

In many European countries and other strong first world nations like Japan and Oz that provide strong social safety nets and baseline standards of living you see the inverse passive effect described in other comments where people can stop trying to sell themselves at all.

So it seems like people will eat each other until the average is good enough at which point a segment of the population stops competing at all.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#68

Post by bsder »

rtx wrote: post #62
compscistd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it was the official Indian student group registered on campus. Nothing wrong with the association itself, but a large subset of it were Bio majors so I’d imagine that’s how many were involved.

Why is studying based on previous years questions cheating. Dont we do the same with white board interviews?

It's not "cheating", per se, but it is unfair.

How does an unaffiliated student get access to those prior year exams? Fortunately, the internet is levelling this somewhat.

When teaching at a college level, I used to go out of my way to provide any historical resources. I want my class to be fair to everyone involved.

I also used to redraft my exams and assignments every single year. This is quite a lot of work and a lot of professors simply won't do it. However, if you don't, then some students will take advantage of it, and your class isn't being fair to everyone.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#69

Post by kovac »

compscistd wrote: post #49
Waterluvian wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there? How did they not get filtered out during residency?

Highly anecdotal, but my ex at the time (white), bio major, had a real tough time studying for midterms and finals in undergrad. Meanwhile, my cousin (Indian) in the same class was breezing through the exams, partying more than me (a liberal arts major!), generally screwing around and somehow consistently ended up with a better score. My ex couldn’t parse this and just assumed my cousin was smarter or more qualified…

I remember when I was in college, we had this end of semester exam for stochastic processes. Our exams are usually about 2 hours long and have about 4-5 problems to solve. After this particular exam, a friend of mine was surprised that I hadn't seen the last problem with the answer in our professor's book (she has seen it the night before. Looks like all her friends had too). Ina mathematics exam with 4 problems, I can't exaggerate the relief one would feel if one of the problems is already solved for you. Not sure how often this happens, but it seems like it's quite common. I was in a special scholar's group. I was more into going to the library, exploring related theorems and stuff while except for a handful of others, most my peers were just doing past papers and practice questions for the exam. I did okay, but I felt like trying to learn more and explore things in university was a liability as far as exams concerned. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Felt like a waste of time.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#70

Post by zabardasth »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #30
aviraldg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so quick to blame "backwards attitudes" when this behaviour is simply to meant to compensate for discrimination against Asians in college admissions? ( https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-many-sins-... ) Asians with far better scores are deemed to be less worthy due to "uninteresting personalities" than others far less qualified. I don't think it's difficult to understand why the children of…

I think it's backwards to believe that the measure of your life is how prestigious a college you went to, or how much money you make, especially if these goals lead you to cheat and lie to advance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W--KU79Y0DQ
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