Homework threads aren't necessarily evil

[dragonchild]

I'd like to see if there can be a difference made between types of homework questions.

The obvious type is the OP saying "Here's the homework problem. Please answer it for me." I don't think that anyone is going to say this should not be deleted.

However, there's the OP saying "I don't know where to start." or "I'm looking for references to read." or "Please explain why this works." This, to me, is more tutoring than doing someone's HW for them. Just because the OP is asking for help with a homework question doesn't mean that the thread should be deleted.

For example, there is a node today (which prompted this post) regarding the Fisher/Yates shuffling algorithm. It was obvious that the OP was doing some HW regarding Fisher/Yates. In fact, s/he even said that s/he was writing a paper on the topic. And, consequently, diotalevi considered the node for deletion. (This is, in no way, a flame of diotalevi's actions. He was completely within his rights as a PMonk in good standing to make that consideration.)

However, the thread sparked a lot of good discussion on RNGs and algorithmic analysis in general. That kind of thread is one of the many reasons why PM is a good resource for Perl development and programmer improvement. I have learned more about programming theory than Perl development on this website, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Perl, while an amazing language, isn't the be-all-end-all of programming languages. And, the most powerful tool is useless without the knowledge that features exist, like functional programming or some of the more esoteric uses of hashes. The major resource here, for professional developers, is the access to developers, like tilly, tye, and Abigail-II, who are willing to expose others to new paradigms and new concepts. Many of those lessons, however, only occur in the context of "homework" threads, because those are the subjects that tend to spark discussion. Then, more threads are spawned as monks want to continue the discussion.

I guess my point is that I wanted to raise awareness of "good HW threads" vs. "bad HW threads".

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

[tye]

The obvious type is the OP saying "Here's the homework problem. Please answer it for me." I don't think that anyone is going to say this should not be deleted.

I am. When people make mistakes, point them in a better direction. There are bound to be a few readers who learn from such.

Is the thinking something like: "He didn't show any effort. If we delete it, that will discourage such things."? Um, how? If you delete it, then you minimize how many people will see it and pretty much ensure that no newbie learn from it.

I'd rather we reserve reaping only for the nodes that do some damage and for true duplicates.

                - tye

[phydeauxarff]

"I'd rather we reserve reaping only for the nodes that do some damage and for true duplicates."

++ tye...I couldn't agree more.

Deleting nodes might have a satisfying affect for those offended by them but they leave holes in the record of what occurs here, in this case a homework node that get's a bunch of "we won't do your homework" replies serves a better example for future monks than does a reaped node.

[sauoq]

Is the thinking something like: "He didn't show any effort. If we delete it, that will discourage such things."?

My thinking is that if we leave a node as brazen as this one and someone does answer it, that will encourage similar postings.

Besides, I really doubt that someone who is too lazy to even attempt to disguise their homework before posting it is going to search the site first to see how the local culture might respond to their request...

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

[demerphq]

"He didn't show any effort. If we delete it, that will discourage such things."?

Personally Ive written the kind of "theres a better way to ask your question" posts many times. No doubt you have too. We all know monks who on one occasion or another have. But have those posts discouraged such things? A little perhaps, but not much IMO. The only people who know about them are the ones that have done some digging, and they arent likey to do such things in the first place. So for me I tend not to write such nodes anymore.

Now on the other hand there are newer younger monks who are learning, if one of them wants to advise a hapless colleague on how to reap the benefits of the Monastery then fine. And I personally (and feel in general saints should) reserve -- and deletion votes for extreme situations beyond HW, but I dont shed a tear when a really HW type question bites the dust.

I think that a little effort by the pmdevils (and I know I speak more than I act :-) to put some better links and warnings about writing nodes on the creation point (especially for novices) would make a much better contribution to dealing with this problem than dealing with each in turn with a helping hand. As I said earlier theres lots of good nodes on writing nodes in the archives, in both root node and reply form. Why dont we dig some out and reuse them? Then if a node gets deleted at least people were already warned.

Just my $0.02


---
demerphq

_{<Elian> And I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in having an OO assembly language...}

[pzbagel]

I have very much the opposite view. I mean let's analyze this rationally.

1. What are the chances that the homework is posted Anonymously or by a completly new user. Pretty Damn Good. This person has not spent any time here, they don't know how the community functions. They don't bother lurking and realizing that it isn't nice to post homework here.
2. What are the chances that this person has searched the site for a solution.Nil, they are lazy, their homework is due in the next 24-48 and they don't have time to do it themselves, that's why they posted it.
3. What are the chances that this person is going to stay on and participate in our community once they received 100 replies to the effect of "We don't do homework. You suck". or worse, if an overly-eager monk actually completes their work for them Not bloody likely. They will leave with a bad taste in their mouth or with their homework done. They will either think we are snobs or simply ensure they post their next assignment here. Because they know that if they weather the storm of flames they will get one sucker who posts the code for them.

Now I realize that this community is very open and accepting. I enjoy the help I have received and I enjoy contributing. But I don't believe leaving the homework nodes intact with 20 replies all stating "we don't do homework" in a variety of facetious ways is going to get the message out. While it deters that single user and annoys a lot of monks, it will do nothing to deter future homework posters as they are typically new to the site and don't really care about community etiquette. Just about getting their homework done. Erasing the node deters the mis-guided user and annoys a lot less monks. And when somebody new comes around to post more homework? We'll just have to deal with them then.

Later

[moxliukas]

I think I have to agree with dragonchild on this one. I think the Monastery benefits from interesting and non-standard questions regardless if they are homework questions or not. Most of the time the replys that the people seeking knowledge get are very well explained and this might actually help them to understand Perl better.

Here is my try to categorize "Homework" questions:

• Trivial questions where the person asking the question does not seem to show any interest in finding the answer him/herself or even understanding the answer.

  These sort of questions should probably be frowned upon and the answers would probably point only to the documentation chapters rather than pre-packaged solutions. there might be some exceptions to this, as it is possible that it is not a homework question at all (maybe someone, who is programming in other language had a very quick need to write a perl one-liner? Though everyone should probably be able to ditinguish such people by their attitude and willingness to understand the problem that they are having)

• Some homework questions might be easy enough, but the person who gives the question is showing enough interest in understanding the problem rather than just solving it and forgetting.

  These sort of questions should probably be answered in a tutorial form and may even spark some discussion. Even if they don't help the person who asks them (and by "don't help" I mean "they learn nothing from it"), these answers could be reused by the people who are learning Perl. I know that I benefit from even some of the trivial questions by reading their answers.

• Then there are interesting and non-standard questions.

  I think it doesn't really matter if it is a homework question or not and if the qustioner is interested in it or not. We like solving non-standard problems. And these sort of questions spark by far the most discussion. However, homework question are usually not terribly interesting by definition.

[blue_cowdawg]

I guess my point is that I wanted to raise awareness of "good HW threads" vs. "bad HW threads".

Well... I don't have a problem with someone posting their homework if they show some effort on their own in solving the problem. If someone posts their homework and it is in the form of "I tried this, it doesn't work and I get these errors, where am I going wrong?" then I will be all about trying to help that individual come up with a solution to fix their broken code.

Someone posts " here's my assignment write me an answer to it" and I am going to be less inclined to be helpful.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we all were beginners once and it is up to us "older and wiser" folks to help out the current crop of beginners. Sometimes helping them means telling someone to do their own work.

---

Peter L. Berghold	Brewer of Belgian Ales
[e-mail]	www.berghold.net
Unix Professional

Edit by tye, use 2 ULs (not 3) to match the 2 /ULs

[Vorlin]

I believe there are three methods of posting in reference to homework posts. They are listed in bold as follows:

Here's my homework, please do it for me. I haven't searched on anything nor have I done any preliminary studying nor have I tried to make a prototype that can be presented to the community.

I don't believe there's any lack of prediction of what would happen to this type of thread. More than likely, until it got considered enough for deletion, said user will be told in explicit terms (both good and bad), they are better off looking for themselves. The community is not here to just give away answers to those who aren't showing any degree of effort.

I have a homework assignment I'm working on and I'm stuck. I've done X, Y, and Z and came out with this output, these errors, I'm at a brick wall and am requesting help. Here's my code and I am open to suggestions and guidance.

This type of thread will definitely be met with much more positive response from the community. If someone posts this way, they're honest up front, have definitive work to show, tried, etc... I'll be much more inclined to help someone when they're in this mode rather than the first one and I'm sure others would agree.

I've done a little bit of work, kinda looked around, haven't really tried but sorta did and now I'm expecting an answer to my question.

This is the last situation I can think of where the person *is* making an attempt, however, their presentation is completely wrong and hence, more negative responses are likely to appear concerning proper format, the correct way to present a question, etc etc. This in turn lights a fire both in the community and to the person who may have thought they handled it correctly.

There they are, the good, the bad, and the misguided. I hope that the community and those seeking help with bonafide homework assignments can mesh in cooperation given correct presentation of the problem with due effort and sample code as well as those older and wiser giving helpful hints, guidance, direction, and overall assistance to said person in a manner that's not conducive to flame-bait or condescending in nature.

But these are my simply opinions, hehe...

[mandog]

Vorlin says

I believe there are three methods of posting in reference to homework posts. They are listed in bold as follows:

There is also:

Here is the hint I got from somebody else, I'll pretend it is my effort & ask you to take it a little further, so I can take it to another person for another hint. I'll keep doing this until the work is done.



email: mandog

[ajdelore]

One of the greatest things about perl is the community -- in fact, probably the greatest, IMHO. A big part of that is readily available, friendly help with problems.

One of the best things any of us can do to advocate perl is to maintain that atmosphere.

I believe that homework questions that are reasonably specific in nature and show that the poster is attempting to learn are not only acceptable, but valuable to other monks as well.*

If we had a more positive view of well-phrased homework questions, it might also encourage people to be more straightforward about it, instead of trying to disguise their intentions.

Even the lazy-type questions deserve to be handled with some decorum and respect for the poster. To echo the comments of many others, everyone is a beginner at some point. I have asked my share of dumb questions here or in c.l.p.misc, and I am sure I will ask more in the future.

In my experience, even when the response is a variant of RTFM, it has always been both useful and respectful. I believe that is something that the perl community should take to heart as one of its great strengths.

</ajdelore>

* For instance, I had no idea that calling <> in list context would read the whole file into an array of lines until I read this node yesterday. I always thought you had to explicitly iterate over <> or else set $/ = undef and slurp the whole file into a string.

[diotalevi]

While the question was semi-interesting, I really wasn't inclined to tolerate someone's blatant attempt to cut corners. Its in that sense that I considered it for deletion, as being in the same no-effort class as Finite Automaton. It also happens that the consideration mechanism is a democracy and it appears that only a minority of people agreed with me. *shrug* I'm not going to worry about it, the system worked.

[blue_cowdawg]

I did a stint as an Adjunct Professor at Baruch College. One of the first things I told my students not to do was post on Perl Monks for the answers to their homework!

---

Peter L. Berghold	Brewer of Belgian Ales
[e-mail]	www.berghold.net
Unix Professional

[diotalevi]

That almost sounds like it could have used an automated feed - get SoPW abstracts in your e-mail and know whether you students did that.

[greenFox]

In my opinion more Monks need to read and take to heart On Responsible Considerations (thanks footpad ++) and Do my homework for me! (thanks dws ++).

The person posting the question is never the only audience, every-one gets to learn from a well crafted answer, even if it is "well doh! you can read about it <here>". Each post is a chance to inform the whole community now and in the future.

Even a blatant request for "write my code for me" can be answered; show off your skill with an obfu or a golfed solution which will make the reader work, post a broken or partial solution and give hints at where/how it can be fixed, adapted or completed. Sure they might not get it, but someone else could, every-one can learn from a post that forces us to think.

If you see a post which you think is just "reducing the signal to noise" then stop and look for a way to turn that noise into signal or move along and allow some-else to.

Update: changed adding to reducing, thanks mildside++

--
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. -Basho

[mildside]

If you see a post which you think is just "adding to the signal to noise"

Nitpick: Don't you mean "reducing the signal to noise (ratio)" or "adding noise to the signal"?

Cheers!

[chunlou]

As said by others, a good interesting homework question, be it from someone at school or at work, benefits other readers as well. A cheater won't get far in technical profession anyway (it's another story with other professions) and should the person a "cheater" actually learn something and apply the knowledge to do something useful in life, that's only a win-win situation for us. So, we might as well keep and even answer the good homework question for the sake of competent learners.

Besides, the responsibility of catching a cheater lays squarely on the teacher at school and the school system. At least, it should be obvious to catch some with great performance discrepancy between take-home assignment and in-class exam or any kind of in-person quiz.

(That reminded me a post a while ago that told an anecdote where a job interviewee claimed to be chromatic but failed to explain most of "his" own code, let alone the fact that many people do know who chromatic is.)




__________________
Update: I slipped my mind. Thanks blue_cowdawg for reminding me. I forgot how many phony consultants I've encountered and forgot some people don't actually have to do work for professional advancement, just cunningly claiming credit.

Update: The anecdote mentioned above came from Re: CPAN Authorhood

[blue_cowdawg]

A cheater won't get far in technical profession anyway

Sadly, I have far too much personal experience to the contrary. I used to work for someone who was a "cheater" to the extreme. He was an RF engineer whose designs for RF compenent systems only worked because he had technicians that re-worked his designs until they worked. He would then fault the techies when his designs were unworkable.

My experience with the man directly was that he would take credit for my work directly. (I designed/built automated test systems for him) He would tell upper management that he designed the systems and wrote the software and that I didn't know what I was doing.

He was found out the day we got a new VP who could see through his BS and he couldn't explain how one of the test systems I built worked to the VPs satisfaction. The VP then asked me and I gave him the correct answers.

the responsibility of catching a cheater lays squarely on the teacher at school and the school system.

This is why there are now ethics classes in schools. Seems that cheating is considered by our society as being OK as long as you don't get caught. Unfortunately for my students using Perl Monks to cheat with was not an option since I made it clear to them that I monitor Perl Monks as well as several other online communities.

---

Peter L. Berghold	Brewer of Belgian Ales
[e-mail]	www.berghold.net
Unix Professional

[phydeauxarff]

"He was found out the day we got a new VP who could see through his BS and he couldn't explain how one of the test systems I built worked to the VPs satisfaction. The VP then asked me and I gave him the correct answers."

Ah the power of Karma once again shows true...what goes around, does indeed come around ;-)

That is perhaps the most valuable ethics lesson to be learned from this thread.

[rir]

the responsibility of catching a cheater lays squarely on the .. teacher ... and the school...

Yikes!

[Coruscate]

I'd just like to nitpick at one subject that I've seen come up several times and it nearly always annoys me. Anything that more or less states that a certain monk is higher/lower than any other hits my nerves. Just a couple of excerpts from your post:

He [diotalevi] was completely within his rights as a PMonk in good standing to make that consideration.

Just what do you mean by this? That diotalevi is a Saint and therefore can do anything he wishes? Or that he has shown that he doesn't consider every node that hits him the wrong way (ie: he thinks before he acts)? Or something else entirely? What if a monk who hasn't been around as long as some of us had considered the node? Would higher monks have chastised him/her for hastily considering nodes? Or would it have been reacted upon in the same fashion? It's hard to say, but I think some hold back their opinions on such matters based on the author associated with a node.

The major resource here... is the access to developers, like tilly, tye, and Abigail-II

Okay, what makes tilly, tye and Abigail-II so special over anyone else here? I can think of a few dozen other names that might as well have been listed as well. Yes, these three monks are indeed a great resource, but putting them up on a pedestel doesn't help anything. Without an entire community contributing, a few monks wouldn't be doing a heck of a lot on their own. Even the littlest guy should have his/her name listed.

It might sound like I'm complaining about nothing or maybe that I'm putting down someone, but I'm not. To make my wish simple, it'd be changing "diotalevi considered the node for deletion." to "the node was considered for deletion" and "... the access to developers, like tilly, tye, and Abigail-II, who are willing..." to "... the access to developers who are willing...". It avoids finger pointing and praising a limited audience. Perhaps just another reason why the XP system is a disappoinment in some respects. Yes, being labeled as a long-time contributing member can be nice, but at what cost? Ignoring the little guy?

Just the opinion of the not-so-big but not-so-small guy.

---

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[dragonchild]

That diotalevi is a Saint and therefore can do anything he wishes?

No, that diotalevi is a member of level Monk or higher who hasn't been frozen, deleted, or some other nasty thing. I didn't even know (or care) that diotalevi is a saint. Frankly, I thought he was like level 8 or 9. And, as for hasty considerations ... I have entered into "discussions" with at least two "Saints" as to considerations and/or front-pagings, both as the "discusser" and the "discussee".

what makes tilly, tye and Abigail-II so special over anyone else here?

The fact that I could remember their names as monks I have had conversations with over the past two years. They're also monks I personally have learned from on a number of occasions, some of them embarassingly so. There are hundreds of monks who contribute in a similar fashion, new and old, young and old, etc. The reason I didn't list them is I didn't remember them off the top of my head. *shrugs*

As for your last paragraph ... it's going to be something we're going to agree to disagree on. My personal style is that I always name names as much as possible. I don't believe in (much) tact as a personal article of faith. I believe very much in trying to be as explicit as possible. If your feelings or sensibilities are hurt because of this, I truly am sorry for your hurt. But, I don't apologize for my actions.

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.