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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

#141

Post by ec109685 »

flukus wrote: post #81
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…

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?

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#142

Post by flamedoge »

stale2002 wrote: post #134
jmkni wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing About FizBuzz is that, if you Google programmer interview questions , it's the first thing that shows up and takes about 2 minutes to wrap your head around. Somebody who can't do Fizzbuzz in an interview has literally done zero preparation for that interview.

But even then, you'd be surprised how many people don't even do that..... Even so, I usually ask something that is barely more difficult, like traverse a tree, or reverse a sentence. There is no point at all in asking the hardcore, Google interview questions, as a simple question tells you just as much, which is "do you have a pulse".

I got asked compiler question once. How to find dominators. I haven't had to find dominators for a very long time other than from a college course, mostly only used them. Looking it up, it's definitely not something you can come up with because it's so clever.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#143

Post by JustFYI »

dasmoth wrote: post #132
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 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.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#144

Post by flamedoge »

flukus wrote: post #81
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…

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.

at 90% failure rate, that would make degree so much more valuable

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#145

Post by ec109685 »

tsm wrote: post #103

I TAed every semester of college except my first, and went to a small liberal arts school where cheating was legitimately uncommon. However, I'll never forget the following exchange: Student: Why did you give me a 9/10 on the sorting lab? tsm: Your shell sort didn't work for n > 7 S: But Professor Smith looked over my shoulder during the lab and said it looked fine. tsm: And in fact it breaks for n > 7; I don't care…

9/10 was a very generous grade for that.

I was saddened when I TA'd an operating systems class and not only caught two groups cheating, but numerous groups with race conditions in their Nachos code (you could fuzz the seed to change the system's execution order between threads and students clearly didn't test that). The professor wasn't harsh enough on either sets of groups, in my opinion.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#146

Post by JustFYI »

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.

It doesn't matter even for smaller corporations: if you can bill the PMs work from customer, he's just as qualified as the guy with top grades from top university.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#147

Post by bragh »

Buge wrote: post #64

I was an IA for a computer security class. We discovered a number of students cheating by copying answers from a public github repo from the previous semester. We noticed because many students were submitting the same bizarrely wrong answer. Some students had even copied all the typos. Even crazier, a number of the students had even forked the github repo with their github accounts. That is some terrible opsec. Defin…

I have noticed that these things matter only when someone has been burnt by it once already. So before your class, nobody in their life had even bothered to check for plagiarism.

Had to fail the projects of 1/3 of the class in a community college because of plagiarism. Although to their credit, they at least put in some effort by shifting sentences around and re-drew other students' diagrams. They did keep the same node names and relationships between nodes, though.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#148

Post by nathan_f77 »

I understand that it's plagiarism when you're supposed to be learning and writing your own code, but perhaps this is the wrong way to teach programming.

It shouldn't be such a big deal if you find an open source library or code snippet on StackOverflow that solves your homework assignment. Maybe the problem lies with the assignments. They could be rotated, rewritten each year, or even randomized for every student, so that you really have to understand the code you're writing (or copying). If you find some code that solves 90% of your problem, and you know how to tweak it to solve the remaining 10%, then that's a far more valuable and practical skill than writing everything from scratch. It's also a great way to learn from other programmers and see what they are doing.

I'm probably completely off-base, since I'm a self-taught developer, so my learning style is very different. But I spend the vast majority of my time reading other people's code, studying documentation, and using open source libraries. "Plagiarism" is a very, very important part of this industry.

It would be interesting to work on randomized coding assignment generators. I've worked on similar things in the past, where my company used it as a filter for software engineering applications. I wonder if any universities would be interested in that. It would completely solve the plagiarism problem, because every student would have to write unique code to solve the problem they were given.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#149

Post by kurtisc »

glangdale wrote: post #47
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…

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.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#150

Post by tonyedgecombe »

flamedoge wrote: post #142
stale2002 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even then, you'd be surprised how many people don't even do that..... Even so, I usually ask something that is barely more difficult, like traverse a tree, or reverse a sentence. There is no point at all in asking the hardcore, Google interview questions, as a simple question tells you just as much, which is "do you have a pulse".

I got asked compiler question once. How to find dominators. I haven't had to find dominators for a very long time other than from a college course, mostly only used them. Looking it up, it's definitely not something you can come up with because it's so clever.

Those questions tell you more about the interviewer than the interviewee.
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