We use just such a program in many of the CS courses at my school. The program will generate place holders for the variable and function names in a tudents code, then do the lexical analysis. The idea is to look for structural and algorithmic similarities. These similarities usually imply one of two things: the program was REALLY easy, or somone copied. These casea re then reviewed by the prof.
While I have no problem with open-source projects that mimic/steal the interface from some Win app... I wish there was a *little* more effort to innovate in the UI area.
For example: The Outlook "Contacts" screen. This is probably the *worst* implementation of an address book I've ever seen. It's impossible! Even Outlook Express does it better. Admittedly, I can't think of a single mail app that *has* done this well... I kinda like hoe Postmaster (?) on Be handles things, but it isn't a useful method for Linux...
Back on topic -> Don't follow blindly! Use what's best to get people to switch, to keep it simple... But look for places that you can improvise and add functionality!
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We use just such a program in many of the CS courses at my school. The program will generate place holders for the variable and function names in a tudents code, then do the lexical analysis. The idea is to look for structural and algorithmic similarities. These similarities usually imply one of two things: the program was REALLY easy, or somone copied. These casea re then reviewed by the prof.
While I have no problem with open-source projects that mimic/steal the interface from some Win app... I wish there was a *little* more effort to innovate in the UI area.
For example: The Outlook "Contacts" screen. This is probably the *worst* implementation of an address book I've ever seen. It's impossible! Even Outlook Express does it better. Admittedly, I can't think of a single mail app that *has* done this well... I kinda like hoe Postmaster (?) on Be handles things, but it isn't a useful method for Linux...
Back on topic -> Don't follow blindly! Use what's best to get people to switch, to keep it simple... But look for places that you can improvise and add functionality!
And make sure your client supports IMAP =)