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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

#191

Post by varjag »

salesguy222 wrote: post #178
varjag wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you think a typographer can enter coordinates into a system from the late 80s? The pilots themselves can't even enter the coordinates. These planes were programmed by the CIA.

I believe they are entered by authorized service officers using methods typical in other industrial data entry applications (e.g. serial console). Entering waypoints and target coordinates has nothing to do with computer programming. Just like when you bum an extra trailing zero in your Excel spreadhseet it's not a programming error.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#192

Post by achievingApathy »

flamedoge wrote: post #144
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.

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

Only to those people that got them after IDs were being checked.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#193

Post by komerdoor »

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…

A company in the Netherlands sometimes hires me to help them guide the interns. They are what is called a learning-company over here.

Out of the 100 IT interns every year there are usually about 5 that know more than only the basics. This has been a consistent pattern I've seen over the last 4 years. It does not matter what level education they are having. Many times I even had to explain what functions, conditions etc. are while they somehow still managed to get average grades for classes that require this knowledge.

I really do not understand how so many people manage to fool almost everyone for so long. It usually ends up being the case that I (because I get hired to guide them) or the about 5 good interns that are there do most of the work for them. Of course some of them still manage to setup a Wordpress website or write some simple HTML. Just enough to impress the company owners.

Another consistent pattern (as mentioned before) is that very often their end-goal is to become an IT-manager. These are usually the better talkers.

Of course this is all anecdotal, but I've asked many other people that guide IT interns and they noticed the same thing. Probably something that can be researched.

Now I may seem like the one that thinks very highly of himself (by reading my own text I can understand why it may look like this) and this is exactly what makes this difficult to explain to the company owners when I notified them about this. They just do not believe the 5 to 100 ratio and think I've some difficulty accepting people.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#194

Post by achievingApathy »

mrlyc wrote: post #173
thegayngler wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBQH, Management does not care about clean code so much as getting a project out by the deadline however unrealistic it may be. Clean code is very low on their list of priorities. Even among managers who used to be engineers it's very low on the list of priorities. They say they care about it. That's not the reality though.

It depends on the company. One place I worked at instituted a bonus system with the result that programs were released on time, buggy or not, as releasing them late would have reduced the managers' bonuses. I raised a stink about that by repeatedly saying "We really must inspect the code before the product ships." I was sidelined and let go early when the company shrank to a shadow of its former self, infested by peo…

I can understand a strong emphasis on quality for an air traffic control system and am glad that there was more weight put on getting out quality code than meeting a deadline (especially with some companies interpretations of DevOps/CI/CD). I'm curious what sort of defect penetration did you get once you got to the test bench?

I've had lines of code go through walk-throughs, inspections, paired programming, the works, and still end up failing somewhere down the line in integration testing.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#195

Post by salesguy222 »

lostboys67 wrote: post #184
salesguy222 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the problems with GPS designators was when you changed batteries it reset to your current location which has lead to more than one blue on blue

Wow, that's brutal. I wonder if those American lives are considered collateral damage too to those pushing for war

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#196

Post by lostboys67 »

salesguy222 wrote: post #195
lostboys67 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems with GPS designators was when you changed batteries it reset to your current location which has lead to more than one blue on blue

Wow, that's brutal. I wonder if those American lives are considered collateral damage too to those pushing for war

Yes it was a bug in the embedded software as I recall - the testing did not make it squaddie proof.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#197

Post by Zenst »

I started out in the very early 80's and first job was a Electrical company government job. First week was an introduction to COBOL (which I already knew) and second week was an introduction to GCOS (which I also already knew).

One of the challenges in the second week was to come up with as many ways of copying a file using the GCOS8 (Honeywell Bull DPS8) shell. Now on GCOS the current workfil was called SRC, so one example was to use that, now one of the other `students` came over and accused me of copying another chaps work, I laughed and so did the chap in question who knew me very well. We thought nothing of it. Later when it was show and tell this chap who had accused me of copying somebody else's work had a glaring error in his work. He had used MTW instead of *SRC. Now this chap was called Martin and had accused me of copying from Steven, who's initials happened to be...SRC.

Sadly this Martin chap ended up getting the best position, turns out he had schmoozed the head guy with BBC micro talk and as he had one, they had a good chat about that and the whole aspect that he was not that good just got overlooked.

Moral being, if your a good person and honest, you do get shafted on from time to time.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#198

Post by salesguy222 »

varjag wrote: post #191
salesguy222 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think a typographer can enter coordinates into a system from the late 80s? The pilots themselves can't even enter the coordinates. These planes were programmed by the CIA.

I believe they are entered by authorized service officers using methods typical in other industrial data entry applications (e.g. serial console). Entering waypoints and target coordinates has nothing to do with computer programming. Just like when you bum an extra trailing zero in your Excel spreadhseet it's not a programming error.

While I can agree with you that entering waypoints is not quite analogous to software engineering, I think we are arguing over semantics.

Especially in 1999 and especially with legacy systems, the word "programming" means "providing computers with coded instructions for the automatic performance of a task".

This is similar to how a television network would "program" a list of shows to occur in order automatically.

I suppose my overriding point here is that there are credentialed people with smart sounding degrees whose maximum extent of interacting with computers is typing in instructions.

And therefore, we should be extremely wary when we use credentialing as the litmus test for "should they enter bomb coordinates that will be flying over civilian heads"

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#199

Post by humanrebar »

davidbanham wrote: post #167
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…

> After reviewing Toyota’s software engineering process and the source code for the 2005 Toyota Camry, both concluded that the system was defective and dangerous, riddled with bugs and gaps in its failsafes that led to the root cause of the crash. > Bookout and Schwarz v. Toyota emanated from a September 2007 UA event that caused a fatal crash. Jean Bookout and her friend and passenger Barbara Schwarz were exiting In…

I was thinking of car control systems, among other things, when I mentioned "exceptions". If this sort of catastrophe happens, there are bigger issues than technically underqualified people making it past technical interviews.

And I wouldn't call safety critical software that can kill people "mundane". It's a minority of code out there and it tends to be really thoroughly vetted, in my experience. I can't comment on Toyota's quality assurance, though.

Re: As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

#200

Post by pdpi »

closeparen wrote: post #87
chrismcb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What? Almost the entire meat of my CS program was programming projects in a variety of foundational domains (operating systems, networking, concurrency, databases, graphics, compilers, cryptography, machine learning, visualization, etc). Theory (discrete math, algorithms, formal languages) was 3 courses out of an 18-course program. HN keeps talking like it's the only thing you do in a CS major, which is bizarre.

I think you misunderstand. After an introductory course, it's expected that you don't need to be "taught to program" anymore. As part of your compiler class, you'll be taught about automata, regular expressions, grammars. For your projects, you might get some help with using a lexer and a grammar generator, but you should be able to figure out the "programming" parts yourself, and the teaching emphasis is on the theory.
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