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Wow, you seem to ride a really high horse if this is the hill you want to die on. As if technical debt and subpar solutions are totally alien to software develo

Wow, you seem to ride a really high horse if this is the hill you want to die on. As if technical debt and subpar solutions are totally alien to software developers.

grayhatter 5y ago
I think you're trying to say something close to perfect is the enemy of good. Which I totally agree with. But worse than what we have now, isn't an acceptable stepping stone because things might get better. If teachers can't write tests that students can't cheat on without using paper, then we still need paper. While yes, theses tests are broken. The problem isn't the test, the issue is breaking something useful, so that we can have something that might get better some day. No, it won't get better. More people will depend on putting answers in the html source code delivered to clients, and everything will keep being shit. I'm perfectly happy to die on this hill. But the hill isn't "subpar solutions can never be used, everything must be perfect from commit 0" The hill I'm willing to die on is "Don't break something that's currently good, to fix something that's already horribly broken and bad." Which I' argue is a good hill to die on.
- chromanoid 5y ago
  > If teachers can't write tests that students can't cheat on without using paper, then we still need paper. LOL. Teachers will never be able to prevent students from cheating. This will only help against a very easily accessible way of cheating that would otherwise render Google Forms Quiz useless for teachers. They don't remove your precious feature. I would fight against this too, if they would. They just allow admins to restrict it on workstations they manage. Just having a shitty electron app in Windows kiosk mode is the alternative... which I thinks is definitely worse. You seem to unknowingly argue against straw men!
  - grayhatter 5y ago
    > LOL. Teachers will never be able to prevent students from cheating. This will only help against a very easily accessible way of cheating that would otherwise render Google Forms Quiz useless for teachers. If Google Forms Quiz embeds the test answers into the html, then is it is already worse than useless. > They don't remove your precious feature. I would fight against this too, if they would. I've already said this to you in another thread, but my sister is a school teacher. I do tech support for her all the time. This *is* something that *WILL* make my life harder. Now that you know it's a feature I need and use to be able to help her, will you actually argue against this with me? > They just allow admins to restrict it on workstations they manage. Just having a shitty electron app in Windows kiosk mode is the alternative... which I thinks is definitely worse. I think electron is worse, but if that's the only other option, then I'd rather they break the test specific electron app instead of the chromium browser that I have to use for everything. This is where I also point out that just because the feature does allow for a small list of websites to block view-source on. There's nothing preventing a stupid or lazy admin who sets it up from blocking it on every computer the school uses. > You seem to unknowingly argue against straw men! No, I'm not. I feel as if you're trying to insult me.. But I think it might be I'm not explaining myself well enough.
    - chromanoid 5y ago
      > I've already said this to you in another thread, but my sister is a school teacher. I do tech support for her all the time. This is something that WILL make my life harder. Now that you know it's a feature I need and use to be able to help her, will you actually argue against this with me? Lol, my mom was a teacher, my wife is a teacher, my sister is a teacher, my sister in law will be a teacher. For all I did tech support. Now what? Actually I think this is a very nice simple solution. Under the circumstances that teachers like to use Google Forms and Google seems to shit on teachers with this use case, let the admin simply deactivate view source for Google Forms URLs and no problem any more. This will only affect student accounts, maybe even only student exam accounts and the problem is solved, especially in primary education.
      - grayhatter 5y ago
        So you lied when you said > They don't remove your precious feature. I would fight against this too, if they would. They are removing a feature I use. But you didn't answer any of my other questions. And ignored my comments about how a lazy or stupid admin will just block view source on every computer and every website. You said taking tests on computers is supposed to make things faster, and more accessible. How does giving admins the ability to disable features that kids can use to learn about computers and the web make things more accessible to students who's school computer is their only computer?
        chromanoid 5y ago
        Why should school admins block view source for teacher accounts? IMO a stupid admin you can ask to enable view source for teacher accounts is far better than a proprietary test application that you are not even able to understand nor debug in any way. Just activate the group policy for exam workstations only and students will not encounter this on any other school computer. Or even better provide special exam accounts.
        grayhatter 5y ago
  - danShumway 5y ago
    > Just having a shitty electron app in Windows kiosk mode is the alternative... which I thinks is definitely worse. Honest question here, why is this worse? Why wouldn't you want a kiosk mode for taking tests? Blocking URLs is kind of a half-baked answer anyway, you don't really want people to have access to most browser features for the embedded page, including dev tools, including the URL bar, you don't want them to be able to Ctrl-S the page, you don't want them to be able to access bookmarklets that can reveal source, etc, etc. If you're using Google Forms to give tests, there are probably other issues there beyond whether or not kids can look at the source code, and the reality is you probably do not want to actually use a full-featured browser to give that test. So there's very little downside I can see to having a single-purpose Electron app that's installed on school computers. I mean, hopefully you're not using kids own computers for this anyway if you care about security, because you have no way to verify that they haven't messed with the browser or bypassed your restriction then. So if they're school machines, because this is a policy for work machines that are managed... yeah, of course you should install a testing app, and of course you should put machines into a kiosk mode. Why wouldn't you? I would think "put school-owned machines into kiosk mode" would be the first step to take as an admin if someone is trying to administer secure tests on those machines.
    - chromanoid 5y ago
      I guess they use some kind of kiosk mode but still want to preserve some browser functionality. E.g. allow access to more exam material not embedded into the quiz or an Encyclopedia for research during exams. An app has to be developed and this development costs money and somebody has to pay this money.
      - danShumway 5y ago
        > An app has to be developed and this development costs money and somebody has to pay this money. Doesn't Chrome already have a kiosk mode built into it? > but still want to preserve some browser functionality. E.g. allow access to more exam material not embedded into the quiz or an Encyclopedia for research during exams. Open Internet access seems like a really bad way to provide that. There are maybe 5 different ways I can think of off the top of my head that are quick to do that circumvent a view-source restriction if the rest of the browser is enabled. Sure, an enterprise admin might know to disable (some of) those methods, but if they're smart enough to do that, aren't they also smart enough to set up a kiosk display? Kiosk apps aren't some kind of new technology, these get used all over the place. I'm curious about the intersection between teachers/admins who are not well-equipped enough to avoid using anything other than Google Forms to deliver tests, but that are well equipped enough to build a network policy that blocks students from just sending each other test answers during the test. I don't know, I don't want to be cynical here, but this kind of thing is literally the job of a network admin, isn't it? It's why you hire them, to set up stuff like this.
danShumway 5y ago
Technical debt like knowingly shipping privileged information to the client by design? I mean, it is true that 'perfect' is the enemy of the good. But 'terrible' is also the enemy of the good. I would question whether a computerized test with these problems is actually better than a paper test. But more than that, I would question whether people have an obligation to make other products worse just to accommodate bad coding. I don't think anyone is demanding perfection by (correctly) pointing out that not designing a product to deliberately leak secure information is kind of the bare minimum bar in a secure testing environment.
Brian_K_White 5y ago
There is no excuse for this level. If it seems ok enough to you, it just means you aren't in the field, or shouldn't be if you are.

Wow, you seem to ride a really high horse if this is the hill you want to die on. As if technical debt and subpar solutions are totally alien to software developers.

grayhatter 5y ago

I think you're trying to say something close to perfect is the enemy of good. Which I totally agree with. But worse than what we have now, isn't an acceptable stepping stone because things might get better. If teachers can't write tests that students can't cheat on without using paper, then we still need paper. While yes, theses tests are broken. The problem isn't the test, the issue is breaking something useful, so that we can have something that might get better some day. No, it won't get better. More people will depend on putting answers in the html source code delivered to clients, and everything will keep being shit. I'm perfectly happy to die on this hill. But the hill isn't "subpar solutions can never be used, everything must be perfect from commit 0" The hill I'm willing to die on is "Don't break something that's currently good, to fix something that's already horribly broken and bad." Which I' argue is a good hill to die on.

chromanoid 5y ago
> If teachers can't write tests that students can't cheat on without using paper, then we still need paper. LOL. Teachers will never be able to prevent students from cheating. This will only help against a very easily accessible way of cheating that would otherwise render Google Forms Quiz useless for teachers. They don't remove your precious feature. I would fight against this too, if they would. They just allow admins to restrict it on workstations they manage. Just having a shitty electron app in Windows kiosk mode is the alternative... which I thinks is definitely worse. You seem to unknowingly argue against straw men!
- grayhatter 5y ago
  > LOL. Teachers will never be able to prevent students from cheating. This will only help against a very easily accessible way of cheating that would otherwise render Google Forms Quiz useless for teachers. If Google Forms Quiz embeds the test answers into the html, then is it is already worse than useless. > They don't remove your precious feature. I would fight against this too, if they would. I've already said this to you in another thread, but my sister is a school teacher. I do tech support for her all the time. This *is* something that *WILL* make my life harder. Now that you know it's a feature I need and use to be able to help her, will you actually argue against this with me? > They just allow admins to restrict it on workstations they manage. Just having a shitty electron app in Windows kiosk mode is the alternative... which I thinks is definitely worse. I think electron is worse, but if that's the only other option, then I'd rather they break the test specific electron app instead of the chromium browser that I have to use for everything. This is where I also point out that just because the feature does allow for a small list of websites to block view-source on. There's nothing preventing a stupid or lazy admin who sets it up from blocking it on every computer the school uses. > You seem to unknowingly argue against straw men! No, I'm not. I feel as if you're trying to insult me.. But I think it might be I'm not explaining myself well enough.
  - chromanoid 5y ago
    > I've already said this to you in another thread, but my sister is a school teacher. I do tech support for her all the time. This is something that WILL make my life harder. Now that you know it's a feature I need and use to be able to help her, will you actually argue against this with me? Lol, my mom was a teacher, my wife is a teacher, my sister is a teacher, my sister in law will be a teacher. For all I did tech support. Now what? Actually I think this is a very nice simple solution. Under the circumstances that teachers like to use Google Forms and Google seems to shit on teachers with this use case, let the admin simply deactivate view source for Google Forms URLs and no problem any more. This will only affect student accounts, maybe even only student exam accounts and the problem is solved, especially in primary education.
    - grayhatter 5y ago
      So you lied when you said > They don't remove your precious feature. I would fight against this too, if they would. They are removing a feature I use. But you didn't answer any of my other questions. And ignored my comments about how a lazy or stupid admin will just block view source on every computer and every website. You said taking tests on computers is supposed to make things faster, and more accessible. How does giving admins the ability to disable features that kids can use to learn about computers and the web make things more accessible to students who's school computer is their only computer?
      - chromanoid 5y ago
        Why should school admins block view source for teacher accounts? IMO a stupid admin you can ask to enable view source for teacher accounts is far better than a proprietary test application that you are not even able to understand nor debug in any way. Just activate the group policy for exam workstations only and students will not encounter this on any other school computer. Or even better provide special exam accounts.
        grayhatter 5y ago
- danShumway 5y ago
  > Just having a shitty electron app in Windows kiosk mode is the alternative... which I thinks is definitely worse. Honest question here, why is this worse? Why wouldn't you want a kiosk mode for taking tests? Blocking URLs is kind of a half-baked answer anyway, you don't really want people to have access to most browser features for the embedded page, including dev tools, including the URL bar, you don't want them to be able to Ctrl-S the page, you don't want them to be able to access bookmarklets that can reveal source, etc, etc. If you're using Google Forms to give tests, there are probably other issues there beyond whether or not kids can look at the source code, and the reality is you probably do not want to actually use a full-featured browser to give that test. So there's very little downside I can see to having a single-purpose Electron app that's installed on school computers. I mean, hopefully you're not using kids own computers for this anyway if you care about security, because you have no way to verify that they haven't messed with the browser or bypassed your restriction then. So if they're school machines, because this is a policy for work machines that are managed... yeah, of course you should install a testing app, and of course you should put machines into a kiosk mode. Why wouldn't you? I would think "put school-owned machines into kiosk mode" would be the first step to take as an admin if someone is trying to administer secure tests on those machines.
  - chromanoid 5y ago
    I guess they use some kind of kiosk mode but still want to preserve some browser functionality. E.g. allow access to more exam material not embedded into the quiz or an Encyclopedia for research during exams. An app has to be developed and this development costs money and somebody has to pay this money.
    - danShumway 5y ago
      > An app has to be developed and this development costs money and somebody has to pay this money. Doesn't Chrome already have a kiosk mode built into it? > but still want to preserve some browser functionality. E.g. allow access to more exam material not embedded into the quiz or an Encyclopedia for research during exams. Open Internet access seems like a really bad way to provide that. There are maybe 5 different ways I can think of off the top of my head that are quick to do that circumvent a view-source restriction if the rest of the browser is enabled. Sure, an enterprise admin might know to disable (some of) those methods, but if they're smart enough to do that, aren't they also smart enough to set up a kiosk display? Kiosk apps aren't some kind of new technology, these get used all over the place. I'm curious about the intersection between teachers/admins who are not well-equipped enough to avoid using anything other than Google Forms to deliver tests, but that are well equipped enough to build a network policy that blocks students from just sending each other test answers during the test. I don't know, I don't want to be cynical here, but this kind of thing is literally the job of a network admin, isn't it? It's why you hire them, to set up stuff like this.

danShumway 5y ago

Technical debt like knowingly shipping privileged information to the client by design? I mean, it is true that 'perfect' is the enemy of the good. But 'terrible' is also the enemy of the good. I would question whether a computerized test with these problems is actually better than a paper test. But more than that, I would question whether people have an obligation to make other products worse just to accommodate bad coding. I don't think anyone is demanding perfection by (correctly) pointing out that not designing a product to deliberately leak secure information is kind of the bare minimum bar in a secure testing environment.

Brian_K_White 5y ago

There is no excuse for this level. If it seems ok enough to you, it just means you aren't in the field, or shouldn't be if you are.