Some people's children
This afternoon I encountered a couple of interesting things in my Computer Methods prac marking.
Firstly, two people whose pracs I'm marking have remarkably similar code -- to the point that the same bad grammar and typographical errors infest the interface. The first time, it was just Bad Code. The second time it was Copied Bad Code. Which brings me to my question: Why copy bad code?
What is the point of cheating if you're not even going to get a passing mark? What is the point of risking your education (read literally, the rules of the university allow exclusion for a year and cancellation of exam results for plagiarism) for the sake of a few hours work that the majority of the class could do better than this code anyway? And what is the point of going to the effort of commenting said horrendous code without even bothering to correct the obvious errors? *sigh*
Secondly, an interesting side effect of using irssi is that people ask me to teach them OpenGL. The conversation went something like this:
Student: Wow! Is that programming?
Jerith: Umm, that's irssi -- a text-based IRC client
* Student looks blank
Jerith: Internet chatting. But I do program, in a number of languages.
Student: Do you know C++?
Jerith: Yes, although I don't use it when I can avoid it...
Student: Can you help me with OpenGL?
* Jerith demonstrates "Google Is Your Friend(tm)"
Student: Wow! 1.6 million OpenGL tutorials?
Jerith: Indeed. Go start reading.
In other news, I'm going to have to start bringing tissues or something downstairs to clean all the finger smudges off the monitors. Can't the people keep things clean? Am I the only bothered by looking through layers of crud to see what I'm doing?
Firstly, two people whose pracs I'm marking have remarkably similar code -- to the point that the same bad grammar and typographical errors infest the interface. The first time, it was just Bad Code. The second time it was Copied Bad Code. Which brings me to my question: Why copy bad code?
What is the point of cheating if you're not even going to get a passing mark? What is the point of risking your education (read literally, the rules of the university allow exclusion for a year and cancellation of exam results for plagiarism) for the sake of a few hours work that the majority of the class could do better than this code anyway? And what is the point of going to the effort of commenting said horrendous code without even bothering to correct the obvious errors? *sigh*
Secondly, an interesting side effect of using irssi is that people ask me to teach them OpenGL. The conversation went something like this:
Student: Wow! Is that programming?
Jerith: Umm, that's irssi -- a text-based IRC client
* Student looks blank
Jerith: Internet chatting. But I do program, in a number of languages.
Student: Do you know C++?
Jerith: Yes, although I don't use it when I can avoid it...
Student: Can you help me with OpenGL?
* Jerith demonstrates "Google Is Your Friend(tm)"
Student: Wow! 1.6 million OpenGL tutorials?
Jerith: Indeed. Go start reading.
In other news, I'm going to have to start bringing tissues or something downstairs to clean all the finger smudges off the monitors. Can't the people keep things clean? Am I the only bothered by looking through layers of crud to see what I'm doing?