Cheating Detector from Georgia Tech

brightboy writes "According to this Yahoo! News article, Georgia Tech has developed and implemented a "cheating detector"; that is, a program which compares students' coding assignments to each other and detects exact matches. This was used for two undergraduate classes: "Introduction to Computing" (required for any student in the College of Computing) and "Object Oriented Programming" (required for Computer Science majors)." Cuz remember programmers: in the real world you are fired if you consult with a co-worker ;)

Comments

Reuse?

[Belly of the Beast]

I thought the point of OOP was reuse ???

;-)

Basic skills vs. industrial collaboration

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Cuz remember programmers: in the real world you are fired if you consult with a co-worker ;)

No, in the real world, they try not to employee you in the first place if you don't have the basic skills to do your job.

Take a look at any Usenet group for a particular language, alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ for example. There are plenty of volunteers in these groups who are happy to help people out with problems. Some, like the group above, are even dedicated to helping newbies, often with their homework assignments. However, most of the professionals there will refuse to post any help at all until it's clear that a respectable effort has been made.

Every now and then, some smart-ass objects and tells them they're something unpleasant, and the reply is always the same. It goes something like this: "I do this for a living. If I help you cheat, then one day you might get a qualification you don't deserve. And then you might wind up working for me."

There's a world of difference between helping someone out who genuinely doesn't know or understand something -- a common and sensible practice in industry -- and doing everything for someone because they're too lazy to do it themselves.