in reply to Code plagiarism and clueless newbs

Hi, the way I see things, we all stand on the shoulders of giants who preceeded us... I plagiarized that quote. :-)

As you get older and realize that death is a forgone inevitability, you realize that the more you give away, the better off you are. I learned my meager skills by copy-pasting-running previously written code, and I often see snippets of my code here and there. I'm just glad that someone somewhere benefited from it. There probably are older monks than me who saw traces of their code in mine.

. I know that programmers need to eat and provide for their families, but newbs need to learn too. If the code is so special that you don't want it plagiarized, then don't post it on the internet. Sometimes a well-crafted example is all a newb needs to open his/her eyes to how it all works.

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. ..... an animated JAPH

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Re^2: Code plagiarism and clueless newbs
by 1nickt (Canon) on May 30, 2017 at 13:16 UTC

    Your reply ignores completely the point of the article, and my meditation, which is about CompSci students cheating to pass classes and get jobs for which they are not in fact qualified.


    The way forward always starts with a minimal test.
[reply]
      Your reply ignores completely the point of the article, and my meditation, which is about CompSci students cheating to pass classes and get jobs for which they are not in fact qualified.

      To address this point: It's them that's cheating, not you & me. Your benefit of teaching is giving; their detriment of cheating is disqualification (sooner or later), or no qualification at all.

      I know a handful of monks only. Most are completely and utterly unknown to me, and it is up to them what they do, and why. By answering questions I train my own skill in explaining things, and sometimes I find myself exploring things I hadn't thought about yet.

      Do people from "no such agency" come here? for sure. Blackhats, skript kiddies, you name it? Of course. Do I condone their actions? How so, if I know neither them nor their actions? Suspicion is akin to prejudice.

      That said, glaring "homework questions" can be answered by gently putting them on the path of learning, or providing them clothes obviously too big to fit.

      Yeah, some Seekers Of Perl Wisdom obviously don't seek wisdom in the first place, but hopefully at last, then.

      perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'
[reply]
      Hi, it isn't only computer science students cheating in school, they all are doing it. In fact, unless you come out of MIT or Cal Tech, most college grads are unqualified for any job. I saw it start when the universities began grading on curves, so that they could keep their student body levels high, and collect tuition. I've been in engineering classes where 95 % of the students got less than 50% on the final, yet they were passed with C's on the curve.

      The colleges just don't want to flunk people out anymore. They encourage cooperating in groups, taking open-book tests, and just problem solving in general. Plagiarism is just part of that culture.

      I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. ..... an animated JAPH
[reply]

        ++ I saw a survey, probably 15 years ago already, of young adults and an IRRATIONALLY HIGH amount of them did not see cheating as immoral or problematic. I can’t remember if it was a full supermajority/quorum but it was a majority.

[reply]
        One could think this might get fixed in job interviews...

        As a matter of fact I had once a skype interview with guys in San Francisco who were totally confused about my replies.

        They were obviously reading the questions from another display and the answer I gave wasn't listed.

        Cheers Rolf
        (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)
        Je suis Charlie!

        update

        next time I'll better offer an interface between our cheat apps

[reply]

        You still haven't read the article, have you? It's about how the colleges do *not* tolerate code plagiarism, have software and other procedures to identify it, and penalize it. And my meditation is about the role that Monks here play in that process, not about grading on the curve, nor about giving away knowledge, nor about whether being a team player is more or less important than coding skills, nor about any other topic.

        In fact, unless you come out of MIT or Cal Tech, most college grads are unqualified for any job.

        As for that statement ... good example of how meaningfulness and hyperbole are in inverse proportion!


        The way forward always starts with a minimal test.
[reply]

In Section Meditations