6 ms·
I agree with the other commenters that say thats a bit harsh to completely fail them. I was in my third CS class in college and I left out a semi colon on a tes
by rickdale 10y ago
I agree with the other commenters that say thats a bit harsh to completely fail them. I was in my third CS class in college and I left out a semi colon on a test and my teacher said, none of the code would work from here, so the answer is just 100% wrong. Even though the rest was 100% correct. I made the argument that if I was sitting at a computer, that would have been less than a 5 second mistake, or something I would have noticed in the syntax highlight, but he insisted it was a complete fail. I never understood that, but I think it relates back to the days when the professor learned on punch cards and one small error was more costly than today.
Another thing is, when I was learning to program, commenting was something I used to keep things light. Sometimes inside jokes or random bits of code that were terrible that would make me laugh once I had the final solution. In my opinion, unless the assignment was designed to teach proper comments, why not let students be creative with their comments, even if its redundant to you.
- vsl 10y agoBecause he's trying to teach them how to write good, readable, maintainable code.
- hvidgaard 10y agoFailing for missing semi colon seems harsh, but in reality, when students are told to run their code before handing it in, a missing semi colon tells you exactly that the students didn't run the code. If a student fails to meet simple basic requirements, they cannot expect some leeway. That said, in a test when hand writing code it should only be pseudo code. Expecting learners to write syntax correct code by hand is stupid. > why not let students be creative with their comments, even if its redundant to you. Because I have to read every comment, decide if it's relevant or not, and delete it if it isn't. "End of line comments" on every single line is not helping anyone - "using for loop to iterate over the array" is bloody useless, because it's right there in the code. Keep in mind this is CS students at least 2 years in.