11 replies to this topic

[Firebird_38]

I need program that does make database and save it into the computer and has to sort it things! Quickly!

Must use "functions" whats functions?

Thank!
--Newbie, 1 post

Does anyone else find this disturbing? Why on earth should we be doing their homework? And then to say "please help... need it tmorrow!"

Yeah, well, I'm assuming you've done this course for a few months now and it seems you're a little late taking your first peek at it. You'll be failing...
And please, can you write coherent sentences? It's hard enough to be figuring out what you're trying to get us to do if you write in non-gibberish...

Just a pet peeve... I guess it's never going to change...

[X_Programmer]

I actually thought this was just another random person asking for homework help at first, lol XD
It's annoying, and most of these people's homework problems can be solved with a little thing called "Google".

[WingedPanther]

It would be interesting to create a "homework index" wiki, where common programming problems are solved in a bunch of different languages, but using techniques that would NOT be typical for most students.

Have the code well-documented, indexed, and easy for the teachers to find for handing out 0's.

[ETShost]

I try not to dignify such post post with a response. If you think someone's trying to get you to do their homework for them, just ignore it.

[Firebird_38]

Who's gonna make this wiki? Or sticky forum?

[WingedPanther]

I can certainly see doing some of them. TkTech has a wiki, as do we. It's mainly just a question of finding people who care about indexing these problems and crafting solutions in various languages.

I can see have C solutions with heavily obfuscated code, C++ solutions that make heavy use of iterators and STL functions, etc.

[atheium]

WingedPanther said:

It would be interesting to create a "homework index" wiki, where common programming problems are solved in a bunch of different languages, but using techniques that would NOT be typical for most students.

Have the code well-documented, indexed, and easy for the teachers to find for handing out 0's.

i lul'd when i read this. then i lul'd harder when i read the responses. you guys are epic

[Jody LeCompte]

I don't necessarily think asking for homework help is a bad thing. Obviously, people who just register on a forum and make a few posts and then start asking for homework help due the next day would be a bit inconsiderate of the community if nothing else. But there are definitely acceptable ways of requesting home work help. If a person posted a reasonably complete solution with an error or two or needing some help fine tuning, I would see it as a totally different scenario than the examples in this thread or someone blatantly trying to just get a free homework pass. Or someone with a complete design needing a point in the right direction when developing the logic. And certainly asking before the last night is helpful as well.

[Firebird_38]

Pointers are of course fine to request.
It's disturbing when you can tell from the post that they haven't paid attention in their class for the whole time they had it (months) and then ask us to go ahead and get them a passing grade. And they then find it funny to do this at 3 in the morning the day it's due, which is exactly the point at which they realize they should have paid attention in the first place.

I am not against helping someone understand, I just "dislike" when they decide they don't need to understand at all as long as we do understand.

Besides, they're not asking what's wrong with their code, they ask us to write it for them instead, and they usually understand so very little that they can't ask the question in a way that we can answer it: It's vague, uses very bad terminology, and when replying you can never assume they understand a word you're saying when you even come up with things like "You need to declare a variable!" "What in the world," they reply, "is a variable??? And how does one 'Declare' one????" Note the excessive use of question marks: The sign that they're running into a hopeless situation.

Most questions they ask, Google will happily answer for them, but that requires a bit of time to research things, something which they at that point obviously have completely run out of.

Someone who sets themselves up to fail that robustly will get what they're asking for. And, btw, no amount of help from members of any forum can rescue them from this failure. One can only hope they learn from their failure and are more timely in the solving of their problems the next time around.

One can also hope that those who get by by the skin of their teeth on others' efforts don't end up writing code for managing your banking account, or checkout system at your local grocery store, for that matter. Imagine!

[Vswe]

WingedPanther said:

It would be interesting to create a "homework index" wiki, where common programming problems are solved in a bunch of different languages, but using techniques that would NOT be typical for most students.

Have the code well-documented, indexed, and easy for the teachers to find for handing out 0's.

But we can't let the people "doing" their homework understand that the wiki won't help them at all. So to get to the page with the purpose of the wiki(it will need one so others doesn't upload "real" solutions) one must solve a simple programming task :P

[WingedPanther]

Well, if you have a problem that involves something simple, like the classic vending machine problem, there are a few things you could do for the C++ solution that would flag it as "bogus solution."

First: specify a strange input file format, and include robust checking for that format. Things like using two spaces between the prices and the first coin.
Second: make heavy use of the STL and STL algorithms for doing the processing.
Third: give the whole app a nice GUI frontend with wxWidgets, Ultimate++, etc.
Fourth: use a multi-file solution that has the currency split through several files, so it's not easy determine why the output is in Kronor, Deutschmarks, etc.
Fifth: use compiler directives to detect the OS at compile time, and make use of API calls in the program. Maybe that could be used to get the currency.
Sixth: use a little embedded assembly for a key function.

The goal is to provide a solution that is correct, well formatted, and obviously not the student's own work.

[atheium]

i think it'd be funnier to answer a students question for them completely accurate except for one randomly placed bit of incomplete code that when the teacher/prof sees and corrects would let em know where the code came from