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I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

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Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#521

Post by niftyBeaks »

uwthrowaway wrote: post #81
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Why would the school admin go nuclear over a request to integrate with the registration system, a system that is clearly intended to be used by applications: > “The Student Web Service gives your application access to information in the Student database such as course data, registration data, section data, person data, and term data (general academic data).” It doesn't make any sense. Was there something left out of…

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42639478

I mean, it still doesn't make any sense. From what I can tell, OP never acquired the API keys needed to actually interact with the system. So he literally just made a demo app and asked permission to make it live. Instead of just saying "No" they tried to coerce him into slave labor.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#522

Post by hn4352 »

diggan wrote: post #483
lkbm wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some required courses are only taught in Spring or only in Fall. Some of those "Fall only" courses are prerequisites for other required Spring-only courses. If you can't get into a required course, it can delay your graduation a full year. That costs way more than a couple hundred dollars. I ended up needing to stay an extra semester for a single course my final semester, because I planned poorly and discovered too l…

> If you can't get into a required course, it can delay your graduation a full year. That costs way more than a couple hundred dollars. Sure, but if you don't have "a couple of hundred dollars", you don't. It's a bit like saying "Why are people poor? Just put $1 million into a savings account, then you'll get enough to survive each month". Great for the ones who can, irrelevant for the ones who can't.

I think most students in America have loans. For me, and everyone I knew, there was a credit balance after the school got paid and that money was put into your bank account.

Don't forget you have to buy books, etc., and they cost "a couple of hundred dollars" too.

When I was an undergraduate I was definitely on a knife's edge, but I also often had cash in the bank because I got a big cash infusion annually. I just had to live off a very strict budget at that time to make sure the money would last.

I wouldn't have wanted to rely on this service when I was a student, especially at that cost, but in a pinch I could see situations where it would make sense.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#523

Post by hn4352 »

renewiltord wrote: post #518
jermaustin1 wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister-in-law is going back for her masters right now. She did the maximum allowed loans from her FAFSA, so after her tuition and fees were paid, she had enough left over to draw a $300/wk "salary" from the remaining balance. She has to pay her rent and groceries and other bills from that, but she usually has about $100 a month left over for "fun" - if she lived in a cheaper apartment or took out additional loans,…

Wait, why would anyone do this, though? It’s like taking a personal loan from the government that is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. The interest is going to accrue every year you go to uni. If you use that to go long on the stock market, I get it since the S&P500 beats interest rates right now, though there’s a risk. Using it on personal expenses seems like the lowest EV choice!

Living expenses have to come from somewhere. If you use the time to graduate faster, instead of working to generate weekly income, in some cases you can come out ahead overall. Details vary, but it's not obvious that it's a bad deal.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#524

Post by renewiltord »

hn4352 wrote: post #523
renewiltord wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, why would anyone do this, though? It’s like taking a personal loan from the government that is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. The interest is going to accrue every year you go to uni. If you use that to go long on the stock market, I get it since the S&P500 beats interest rates right now, though there’s a risk. Using it on personal expenses seems like the lowest EV choice!

Living expenses have to come from somewhere. If you use the time to graduate faster, instead of working to generate weekly income, in some cases you can come out ahead overall. Details vary, but it's not obvious that it's a bad deal.

Essential expenses it certainly makes sense. But it seems some amount of it is treated as disposable income rather than liability.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#525

Post by LordDragonfang »

cbozeman wrote: post #331
joecool1029 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike most of the other commenters I have personal experience fighting a college administration in court. It was a massive time waste and I came out losing a years of my academic career where they lost nothing (money is absolutely not a factor for a large university, nor is stalling court proceedings to waste your life). I'm not even allowed to elaborate deeply on what it was about, the settlement for putting it beh…

I didn't have it quite as bad as you, but I did go to war once with my alma mater regarding a particularly small lab director and part-time instructor who had a Napoleon complex going on. He was directly and obviously infringing on student's First Amendment rights, not to mention bullying the class as a whole and attempting to threaten people. Ironically, his heart was in the right place, but his execution was way of…

I'm always curious in cases like these what the actual exercise of your "first amendment rights" was that the other person took offense to.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#526

Post by jacobr1 »

jdkaim wrote: post #7

Update: I immediately took down my class project site after receiving yesterday’s ultimatum. I still don’t think the simple demo site violated the letter or spirit of the registration rules, but I took it down because I always want to operate in good faith. They followed up today to thank me for doing it, but also indicated that they were putting a hold on my account anyway. As a result, I am not going to be able to…

If UW is anything like my state university your advisor should be able to access the system on your behalf.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#527

Post by ANewFormation »

dzdt wrote: post #437
GrantMoyer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end. All evidence so far indicates they will not make it right, but instead they may make it even worse. Your faith is wildly misplaced. Seriously, talk to a lawyer. Keep in mind, just because you seek advice from a lawyer doesn't mean you need to take legal action against the school. Talking to a lawyer is not a…

A lawyer is NOT the right next step. As soon as you engage a lawyer the school will switch from treating this as a student policy matter (which will be resolved in a timeline of days) to a legal matter (which will only be resolved in a timeline of years). The timeline question is of no concern to the courts or the school but makes a huge difference to you. It does seem like you need someone on your side. A list of pe…

Having been on both sides of the fence here, this is highly contrary to my experience. Large institutions are more than happy, in many cases, to bully anybody when it benefits them. But as soon as possible legal/media issues emerge they're going to suddenly be your best friend looking to make things right as quickly and cleanly as possible.

The ombudsman is definitely not a bad idea, but in most cases the mere hint of legal involvement would get this resolved without any legal involvement - just going on for a consultation doesn't mean one has to go to the next step, and in all probability you won't have to.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#528

Post by croemer »

cdurth wrote: post #464
croemer wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get fooled by LOCs. Out of the 273k LOC added, all but 20k, that is 253k are just from the boilerplate auto-generated copy/paste initialization code: https://github.com/JDKaim/HuskySwap/commit/e9f0df0d5a221b3c7... Sure he probably did most of the coding, but it's still weird to talk all about I and not mention the other 5 in a single word when they _did_ contribute. Maybe they did testing or other things that a…

Not just random biloilerplate/framework code either. A framework his dad created. So with this logic his dad did the majority of the project.

His dad? How do you know? One doesn't count React in the LOC so why should one count a boilerplate template? As I said, LOC are not a good proxy.

Update: I see, LightNap is the work of Ed Kaim, surname checks out. https://github.com/SharpLogic/LightNap

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#529

Post by croemer »

prophesi wrote: post #472
croemer wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get fooled by LOCs. Out of the 273k LOC added, all but 20k, that is 253k are just from the boilerplate auto-generated copy/paste initialization code: https://github.com/JDKaim/HuskySwap/commit/e9f0df0d5a221b3c7... Sure he probably did most of the coding, but it's still weird to talk all about I and not mention the other 5 in a single word when they _did_ contribute. Maybe they did testing or other things that a…

I see the point of contention now. Though I don't think we're being fooled by LOC's. You can check the commits from the other contributors, and it's all documentation / adding line breaks. It's unfortunately common at universities for CS projects to be spearheaded by one gungho student with the others only tidying things up for in-class presentations.

It's also not 56 vs 46 commits but 56 vs 63. 46 is the second biggest committee but there are 17 more commits from the other 4 and my initial point was that it was odd for him to not mention the other contributors at all. Even if he did the major part, I would never say I created something if it was a team effort. He lead.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#530

Post by confidentlyinc »

loeg wrote: post #239
isotypic wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am somewhat surprised issues of scripting and trading even exist in the registration system. Staggering enrollment times over a few days, with new waves every 20 minutes or so, mostly solves scripting issues since you are only competing with a fraction of the student body now. Giving courses waitlists once they are full, instead of allowing people to just directly register once a spot frees up, makes trading imposs…

So, for context, UW's registration system runs on, like, a single 1980s VAX.

That is confidently incorrect
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