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Nice, but needs some more attention to variant (but equivalent) responses. For example, for one of the questions in the first module I selected "Other", then t

Nice, but needs some more attention to variant (but equivalent) responses. For example, for one of the questions in the first module I selected "Other", then typed "Error" (in the free-form response box). The answer it was looking for was "error" (lower-case e). Either it should accept both, or if you're really insistent on distinguishing the two, it should be made more clear at the beginning that system messages (rather than explicit results) are going to be case-sensitive. Counting "ABC" wrong when the expected answer is "abc" would be fair game. Counting "Error" wrong for a pseudo-language that hasn't even been formally defined is not, or so I see it. Looking at some of the languages on which this is claims to be based: In JavaScript, typing abc when it's undefined produces: Uncaught ReferenceError: abc is not defined at <anonymous>:1:1 (anonymous) @ VM33:1 (note capital E in ReferenceError) In Python3 you get: NameError: name 'abc' is not defined. Did you mean: 'abs'? (again, note capital E in NameError) In Racket 8.9 you get: abc: undefined; cannot reference an identifier before its definition (no 'error' of any kind!) I didn't install OCaml, because I need another "package manager" like I need a hole in the head. Java: does not compile, although to be fair the compiler error message does have an 'error with lower-case e' in it. C#: Yeah, not gonna install that either. This may seem extremely nit-picky (and it is), but when you're teaching people who've never programmed before, and who may have never even encountered the concept of case sensitivity before ("But Google doesn't care even if I type in all caps!"), nit-picky is the way it needs to be. As I said, I do like this, but it needs more attention paid to parsing free-form responses. The problem is not unique to this system, of course. The free-form response is where most systems of this general type tend to fail.

echoangle 2y ago
There was an example directly before that question which shows an example output when dividing by zero. There you can see what format they expect the error to be.
- Turing_Machine 2y ago
  These are supposed to be beginning students. You can't just assume that they know that there's even any difference between "Error" and "error".
soegaard 2y ago
> In Racket 8.9 you get: > abc: undefined; cannot reference an identifier before its definition > (no 'error' of any kind!) But that is an error. If you try this in the terminal, you will see that the message is colored red to show it is an error. If you try it in DrRacket, you will see the message written in red text with icons leading to the stack trace. If you try it in Emacs, you will see the message in red indicating it is an error.

echoangle 2y ago

There was an example directly before that question which shows an example output when dividing by zero. There you can see what format they expect the error to be.

Turing_Machine 2y ago
These are supposed to be beginning students. You can't just assume that they know that there's even any difference between "Error" and "error".

soegaard 2y ago

> In Racket 8.9 you get: > abc: undefined; cannot reference an identifier before its definition > (no 'error' of any kind!) But that is an error. If you try this in the terminal, you will see that the message is colored red to show it is an error. If you try it in DrRacket, you will see the message written in red text with icons leading to the stack trace. If you try it in Emacs, you will see the message in red indicating it is an error.