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I think you have fallen into the trap by following your goal of wanting "questions which are easy to mark as right or wrong". You end up writing questions that
by mmcnickle 14y ago
I think you have fallen into the trap by following your goal of wanting "questions which are easy to mark as right or wrong". You end up writing questions that are extremely narrow in scope and don't provide any opportunity for any interesting discussion. Anyone could memorise the states in MESI cache coherence, but does that really test their understanding of the material? That so many of the answers are one google away shows how shallow these questions are. All you're doing here is testing knowledge retention.
I'll admit that I couldn't answer many of these questions off hand; I hope the criticism doesn't come across as bitter.
- randomdata 14y agoI did get the feeling the questions were chosen, perhaps unintentionally, to create a natural bias towards those who have a formal CS education. Contrived example: Someone who came up with a quicksort algorithm independently, and is completely aware of its operating conditions, but chose to call it mysort instead, would be unable to answer the question in the last test despite having all the theoretical knowledge needed. There is, of course, still something to be said about being able to use terminology that is shared with others, but that changes the nature of the test in ways I'm not sure the author intended.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoA good point, considering a large portion of practicing programmers are self-taught.
- iamtempleton 14y agoIs this true in 2012? I would love to see a study or something. Not doubting you, just curious.