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If I were a teacher, I'd give written exams for coding, as we used to have back in the 80's when we didn't have enough dedicated computers for everyone in the c

If I were a teacher, I'd give written exams for coding, as we used to have back in the 80's when we didn't have enough dedicated computers for everyone in the class, and most of kids didn't have a home computer to work with. So instead, we'd implement simple algorithms on paper for in-class quiz/tests/homeworks. I remember in high school, we had an exam, and one of the question was to write a for loop counting from 1 to 40. It might be harder to grade, but teacher could usually tell if the code looked good or not. On one occassion, I thought I had written the code correctly but teacher didn't, so I had to demonstrate the code on the computer for the code that I had written in the test and show the teacher that the code ran as expected. It's kinda like whiteboard coding, but it's a lot less stressful since the test is mostly written on paper without the scrutiny of an interviewer. Obviously, we can't create a react web app, but at least students can demonstrate fundamentals, which are what we should be teaching in the first place. Another solution would be to create a new programming language that doesn't exist yet for the students to write code for their assignments or perhaps use an obscure language that AI/chatgpt isn't aware of... perhaps we can go back to Ada or Modula 3.

travisgriggs 4y ago
> If I were a teacher... You'd be wondering how the heck you get out of a profession where pay is stagnant, the backlog of problems has been growing for a long time, and the minimization of resources to deal with has been in the wrong direction for a long time. You'd join the league of "you can never go wrong hiring another administrator" or exit for some related parlayable field in industry and throw your hands in the air with a "somebody else's unsolvable problem" disgruntled attitude.
- asdff 4y ago
  CS programs seem like a different beast. At my alma mater they are always growing the cs faculty pool. At certain schools you can really work with some giants in cs departments. People who developed the algorithms you are using today with a piece of chalk. A lot of the new hire faculty seem to come from industry too, secured their bag already, and are jaded from working in industry. Sometimes they come from those industry "skunkworks" R&D type of teams where you'd asume everything should have been just peachy for them, but clearly not if they are looking for academic positions with their stacked resume.
austinl 4y ago
I graduated in 2015, and I had several classes where exams involved writing pseudocode by hand—particularly the algorithms-focused classes. I think universities will continue to do this.

travisgriggs 4y ago

> If I were a teacher... You'd be wondering how the heck you get out of a profession where pay is stagnant, the backlog of problems has been growing for a long time, and the minimization of resources to deal with has been in the wrong direction for a long time. You'd join the league of "you can never go wrong hiring another administrator" or exit for some related parlayable field in industry and throw your hands in the air with a "somebody else's unsolvable problem" disgruntled attitude.

asdff 4y ago
CS programs seem like a different beast. At my alma mater they are always growing the cs faculty pool. At certain schools you can really work with some giants in cs departments. People who developed the algorithms you are using today with a piece of chalk. A lot of the new hire faculty seem to come from industry too, secured their bag already, and are jaded from working in industry. Sometimes they come from those industry "skunkworks" R&D type of teams where you'd asume everything should have been just peachy for them, but clearly not if they are looking for academic positions with their stacked resume.

austinl 4y ago

I graduated in 2015, and I had several classes where exams involved writing pseudocode by hand—particularly the algorithms-focused classes. I think universities will continue to do this.