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The 32-Bit Dog Ate 16 Million Kids' CS Homework (code.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the blaming-the-Cloud dept.

"Any student progress from 9:19 to 10:33 a.m. on Friday was not saved..." explained the embarrassed CTO of the educational non-profit Code.org, "and unfortunately cannot be recovered." Slashdot reader theodp writes: Code.org CTO Jeremy Stone gave the kids an impromptu lesson on the powers of two with his explanation of why The Cloud ate their homework. "The way we store student coding activity is in a table that until today had a 32-bit index... The database table could only store 4 billion rows of coding activity information [and] we didn't realize we were running up to the limit, and the table got full. We have now made a new student activity table that is storing progress by students. With the new table, we are switching to a 64-bit index which will hold up to 18 quintillion rows of information.
The issue also took the site offline, temporarily making the work of 16 million K-12 students who have used the nonprofit's Code Studio disappear. "On the plus side, this new table will be able to store student coding information for millions of years," explains the site's CTO. But besides Friday's missing saves, "On the down side, until we've moved everything over to the new table, some students' code from before today may temporarily not appear, so please be patient with us as we fix it."

7 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Well then. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That doesn't inspire a whole lot of trust in the system. Who did they get to code this thing, elementary school kids?!?

  2. And a valuable lesson learned: by aix+tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't trust the cloud as the only place you store your work.

  3. Don't look at it that way... by mmell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Consider this a real-world lesson for our youth in the ways that design choices can have unanticipated effects on implementation, manageability and viability of software in the long haul. For extra credit, the kids that are affected should be encouraged to explore what they could have done to mitigate the risk caused by some grown-up's oversight.

  4. We will never learn by Xarin · · Score: 5, Funny

    4 billion rows of coding activity is all we will ever need

  5. More important lesson by saboosh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thank you for teaching the kids the importance of taking responsibility and being honest and open about your mistakes. It's okay to make mistakes as long as we learn from them. Too many people today are afraid of making mistakes and cover them up.

    1. Re:More important lesson by saboosh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I find people like anecdotes here so please allow me to add: I was raised by very "tough" parents with a very "tough" form of discipline. Mistakes meant punishment. Today I have a 9 year old daughter who, like any other human being, makes mistakes. A few years ago I noticed a very strange phenomena with regards to "dealing" with her mistakes". When I would get upset with her and punish her for spilling on the couch or forgetting to clean her room I would see her make it again and as time went on she would get, either, more defensive about it or try to lie about it. At some point my fiancee asked that I try a different approach: Try being kind and loving with my response and take time with her to show empathy, to share that Im not perfect either and to figure out another way of handling whatever the mistake was.... the taking-time part is probably the toughest for me because it means work, im sure many can relate.... but, strangely, I noticed that she was making the mistakes I handled the new way a lot less... and she seemed to be ok with handling them a new way. She started to clean her room on her own and even though her coordination did not allow her to stop from spilling she was more careful about where she took her drinks and cleaned them up more quickly.... its really ass backwards to me... and to top it off, she seems less anxious around me and my responses and seems less defensive... Im not a psychologist and wont pretend to understand the how or why of it, I just know she seems less distracted and anxious and I seem to get more hugs from here and I will take that over trying to "force" her to learn anyday.

  6. Well duh by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's code.org not databasedesign.org