[Curtis Rutland]

...t know how to program at all.

Sorry, looks like the title got cut off.

Anyway, some threads, for reference:

http://www.dreaminco...rint-attendant/

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am working on my finial year project

...in another post in the same thread...

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from my little ability the ...

This one is worse:
http://www.dreaminco...view-click-row/

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Since I am new and not familiar with C#,I have question which may be easy for u all. So please help me!

...........

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what is object??

So far, no different than a lot of new programmers. When it is suggested that the OP actually learn how to program instead of just trying to stumble through it, he responded:

Quote

i hope i have time to do this too, but i am rushing now. i need to finish my FInal year project before april and this is just one part of it...Tats y i finding short cut.

And these are far, far from the only ones.

I just don't understand this. What the hell did you do all the previous years you were in school? Jerk off? Because you certainly weren't learning how to program if you have to ask "what is object??"

Why are these people doing these projects that are totally out of their grasp, to get degrees certifying that they know how to program, when some of them would have trouble writing Hello World, much less FizzBuzz.

I guess I could understand if they're students learning a totally new language, but why, for the love of god, would you choose a language you know nothing about to write your final project in? If it's just professors being dicks, then I apologize, but somehow I doubt it.

This irritates me to no end. I don't have a degree. I blew my chance when I was younger, and I would love to have a chance to go back and prove that I have what it takes. But I see people like this and wonder, why the hell does anyone care about a degree when people like this can get one?

I guess what I'm asking is, can someone shed some light on this phenomenon? I'm sure you have seen it too.

[NeoTifa]

Because they're spoiled and used to having people carry them through their whole lives, therefore they expect to get a degree and a job by doing nothing (and expecting to do nothing once they get there) by having other people do their shit for them.

[Kilorn]

It seems to me that far too many people enjoy playing games nowadays and they think to themselves, "Hey, I can do that!". Then once they realize how much work is really involved, they get lazy and just want to coast through their schoolwork and get the degree thinking that it guarantees them a job, which is unbelievably wrong to assume. I saw it when I was going through school too. There were numerous people in my class(es) that wanted to create the next Halo, but they didn't have the necessary drive to actually put in the effort to get where they wanted to be. They apparently thought that everything would be handed to them once they had the degree, and once we got past the basic core classes of the program, they realized that perhaps they had made a huge mistake. In fact, I know one guy, and I have no idea how he was allowed to graduate, but he somehow barely made it through. He now holds a bachelor's degree for game design and he couldn't do any 3d art, 2d art, or write code. The only thing I ever saw him do that looked even half-assed, was write html for some horribly designed websites.

This is another problem that I contribute to people just going through the motions to get a paycheck. Nobody actually cares about the work they do anymore. Far too many people want to just sit at work and ride the clock until it's time to go home just so they can collect a paycheck at the end of the week, and somehow their bosses allow them to continue to have jobs when the quality of their work is fucking horrendous. Take some pride in what you do for a living people, and stop bitching about how much you hate your job. Do something that you actually care about, and something that stirs something inside you and you'll never feel like you're actually working, and the quality of your work will improve drastically.

Okay, that's the end of my ranting for now.

[macosxnerd101]

I see this a lot in intro classes, and even classes like Discrete Math and Data Structures I. People coast through those classes by finding those who can and leeching off them. Those who are good at coasting make it to their senior year when they don't really know anything. Honestly, intro-level classes need to be tougher to weed these kinds of people out.

I've also noticed that the OPs' grammar in a lot of these threads is reflective of either a 12-year old girl texting about Justin Bieber, or someone whose native language obviously isn't English. So my guess would be that a lot of these students may be in countries that require things like the Turbo C.

[Curtis Rutland]

macosxnerd101, on 27 December 2010 - 02:20 PM, said:

I've also noticed that the OPs' grammar in a lot of these threads is reflective of either a 12-year old girl texting about Justin Bieber, or someone whose native language obviously isn't English. So my guess would be that a lot of these students may be in countries that require things like the Turbo C.

I get that, I really do. Probably, some of them learned COBOL and then somehow have to do a C# project for their final.

But that shouldn't mean that they can't learn it relatively easily. If you're a programmer, you're a programmer. Syntax and paradigms may differ, but logic doesn't, and your ability to learn new models shouldn't. OK, they may be coming from a paradigm that is totally procedural, and going to an event driven model isn't the easiest thing in the world, but seriously.

Also, screw the professors that require this kind of stuff. You don't take a student who studied Japanese for 4 years then tell them they need to write a 20 page paper in Mandarin for their final.

[modi123_1]

I would also like to point out that a lot of the 'final year project' people look like they trend towards the "South Asian" areas. I am not going to point fingers and say there are huge swaths of people in those areas in school that cheat, but I personally found it three or four times more often than naught. The constant 'give me teh codez' and such. The internet is awash with half assed code snippets and broken issues.

People turn up here with some code in hand only to have me find it was broken from the last known post on the internet five years ago. Zero effort. That or the work is passed on to family members who are more established. I watched foreign students actually scanning in their homework and comment that they home their older siblings (or parents) get it done early enough to have them review it.

Additionally I think it comes down to a lack of common sense and personal responsibility. Instead of putting forth the effort the internet provides. I wonder if I should blame the parents for blowing so much smoke up Sally and Timmy's rear about how self entitled the should be.

insertAlias, on 27 December 2010 - 03:08 PM, said:

why the hell does anyone care about a degree when people like this can get one?

People care because the HR departments are still filled with people from the bygone generations that recognize degrees tend to take effort. Of course a quick interview would also clear things up. Don't fault the universities for people who do not apply themselves.

[lordofduct]

@insertAlias - I too don't have a degree, and this is one of the reasons why.


I feel bad for the guys that have these basic CS degrees. Not the assholes who coasted, but the guys who actually worked hard. They're now stuck with a degree that is held by a bunch of nincompoops. It completely undermines the time, effort, and money they spent to get the degree.

So why have one? And I don't. Some of you may have witnessed my rant in another thread about my opinions of school. And shiny piece of paper is where it comes down too... if we hand them out to just about anyone the paper starts looking like toilet paper instead. Yes, it's elitist, and it's elitist for a reason.

Shit I know people who took CS courses, got degrees, and barely had to touch College Algebra. I went cross-eyed (don't get this confused w/ computer engineering courses, like neotifa is taking, I know she is taking the hard maths). Really, no math? You think you're a programmer and you can't even divide 36 by 9?

"That's what the computer is for LoD!"

Bah!




as for the comments about the foreign aspects. Luckily here where I live their schools aren't recognized or accredited, but still I've met these seems twits here in my community. There are cheaters everywhere.

And I do hold the schools accountable. It seems they push these kids through when they shouldn't. The student isn't holding himself accountable because his teacher isn't holding him accountable because the school isn't holding the teacher accountable. Sounds like the school's fault to me!

To whoever that 'guest' was in the other thread talking about 'real schools', this may be what he was referring to. And in that case I can agree, but we aught to be holding this 'not real' schools accountable so they can be good and they don't dilute the playing field.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 27 December 2010 - 02:36 PM

[macosxnerd101]

@Curtis Rutland: I agree with you there.

I don't think I articulated my point well though. The example of Turbo C was to illustrate that these curricula are very sub-par, and the students are learning irrelevant technologies while not learning how to program.

[modi123_1]

Side note - a bit of historical reading that could lend to the discussion. Clearly if the students are coasting this far then cheating must be involved, right?

Why computer science students cheat?

[Kilorn]

@macosxnerd101: You think the old saying, "Those that can't do, teach." holds water in this type of situation. I've seen a lot of people in CS degrees have some horrible professors, including my wife when she had to take a Java course a couple years ago. Luckily she had me to help her through it because this guy barely spoke english and was a terrible teacher for any subject other than his native language I would imagine. And if the language barrier wasn't enough, the assignments that he gave people weren't laid out in a way that even most expert programmers would understand. So while it might've been a simple assignment, the details and questions the students were required to answer about the logic were almost beyond comprehension.

[NeoTifa]

lordofduct, on 27 December 2010 - 03:28 PM, said:

(don't get this confused w/ computer engineering courses, like neotifa is taking, I know she is taking the hard maths).

[lordofduct]

modi123_1, on 27 December 2010 - 01:34 PM, said:

Side note - a bit of historical reading that could lend to the discussion. Clearly if the students are coasting this far then cheating must be involved, right?

Why computer science students cheat?

So I'm reading the article and already I have issues with it on many levels. (well not the article directly, but the topic in general)

Now I don't condone cheating. But sometimes I think schools overreact. For example both my girlfriend and I years ago before we met and from independent teachers both were accused of plagiarizing OUR OWN WORK! The supposedly plagiarized work was found under the name of some one else who had plagiarized our own work (remember this is independent of each other as well, and this was English, not programming). I convinced my teacher and dean that this was a misunderstanding, but my girlfriend had to rewrite hers because they didn't believe her proof.

Note this was a 'by writing style' comparison they were implementing. Not a word for word plagiarizing account. It highlighted key phrases and sentences that the writer uses. And I bet this stuff is relatively unique, but come on guys, writing style isn't necessarily like finger prints. Two people can be similar.



Another part of the article goes into collaboration work. And it's basically asking what would you define as copying vs what is cheating. And I completely agree... it discourages working together. Some of the quotes say that you should view other people's code or programs and the sort. Really? In the real world you'll do this all the time!

When I was taught to do electrician work, plumbing, driving truck... I wasn't told to blindly keep trying myself and form my own methods. I was told to observe how my peers are doing it, that's why I'm a damn apprentice! This way I learn the right way! Yes a problem can be solved 8 million ways, but that doesn't mean there are 8 million good ways. It means there are 8 million - 5 bad ways, and 5 good ways.

This discouragement of working together makes me wonder what the point of school is then? Isn't school about working with your peers? Isn't university about the large study group where you collaborate? It was the impression I always got.




But it's all speculative nonsense. I don't think schools are blindly repremanding students for cheating without looking into it. Or at least I fucking hope not!

But who knows, I've had professors who flat out said they considered certain benign things as cheating. Wikipedia for one, banned by so many professors. I asked even if it was used to locate other sources (that's what citations are for... durp), and they said it would be instant F. OK... what about forums, instant F as well. Really because asking questions from someone other then the professor is cheating? Good to know.

And it's reactionary, it's a consequence of the weapons some schools have picked up to combat the cheaters. Screwing the other students who are actually putting in leg work... and also forming peer groups as well!

It makes it a catch 22 kind of thing.

So I avoided it all together.






Which leads me to ask a question. What stops you from cheating? I mean I know the "it's wrong", "it doesn't feel right", "I don't get the same feeling of pride". But I always wondered, what the hell did we learn in our lives that made us think that way? Yeah it's a bit rhetorical, I just wished I knew what that thing was. I could speculate for hours on it. And all it does is make me feel bad to think these 'cheaters' didn't get those lessons.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 27 December 2010 - 03:02 PM

[hookiethe1]

As someone who has worked long and hard to be very close to graduating with a CS degree, I'm not sure if this should make me feel better or worse. I realized long ago that at my school we weren't learning enough hands on code, and I've heard others in 3rd or 4th year complaining that they've forgotten how because they haven't done it in so long.
On the flip side though, it would be pretty tough for anyone to coast through this degree at my school, here they do make you take some pretty high level math and science, it's only 1 class shy of the requirement for electrical engineers.
It's all well and good to say you don't need a degree, Lord, but I imagine it would be pretty tough to break into the industry with no demonstrable experience otherwise. If nothing else, a degree is a very expensive foot-in-the-door and a (hopefully) much higher starting point, once you have a few years experience your degree is pretty insignificant by comparison.

I guess people like me can only hope that the system weeds out these coasters, or if not, that getting my master's degree will add sufficient weight to separate me from them.

[NeoTifa]

No, that's not what college is all about. Didn't you know? College is all about partying, friends, and female "experimentation". There's no work involved in college. All the crap professors tell you to do you can just get from some azn off the internet. We don't have to study, that's for nerds! I have a football scholarship, I don't need to actually study. I'm popular. We need to coast along just like we did in high school, expect our teachers to hold our hands through the assignments, and let us hand in our homework well after the due date. I mean come on! Where's the fun in that?! Parties, girls, booze, sex, and weed is what college is about. Who said anything about learning? Besides, I'll just read Visual Basic for Dummies and program a better version of World of Warcraft next week and make millions. Easy peasy.

This post has been edited by NeoTifa: 27 December 2010 - 03:03 PM

[Curtis Rutland]

The truth is, there's a big part of me that hates a large segment of the people I help.

Anyone who's spent enough time in the C# forum (and actually cared, I'm not that narcissistic) would be able to see a pattern that I don't really bother with people that don't deserve help, unless their question happens to get me thinking about something.

The "gimme the codez" are bad enough, but the ones that are sneaky about it, more subtle, they're worse. They've found some code, enough to do most of what they want, and they pass it off as their own code, expecting you to help them fill in the gaps.

But of course, they neither wrote or understand it, so your explanations make no sense, and they ask you to make it all work for them. Then you understand...this person is trying to get me to do their work for them.

The worst of it all, is sometimes I feel I'm facilitating the outsourcing of my own job. I've worked on applications that have been outsourced. Sometimes they come out great. Sometimes they're the biggest steaming piles of crap that were patched together with duct tape and bubble gum (or bailing wire, if you're a farmer like me). They were hard coded to pass tests rather than elegantly coded to handle situations. That kind of stuff. And I feel like every time I help someone that obviously doesn't know how to program, and is asking an advanced question...I feel like I'm basically saying "here, take my job."

There's a whole different segment of the forum's base that obviously cares about learning, and I love to help these people. But you have to wade through a lot of bullshit. And sometimes, you just have to tell them that they aren't skilled enough to do what they want.

This post has been edited by insertAlias: 27 December 2010 - 03:07 PM