C.S. class WTF



  • I've just had a professor tell me that he needs to have all work handed in in a Visual Studio 2012 project because his grader doesn't know what to do with makefiles; it should be noted that the class is an introductory data structure class, rather than something that is Windows-centric or actually needs Visual Studio to be taught.

    Maybe I have this all wrong, but I count at least three WTFs here:

    1. Why is this person allowed to help grade computer-science homework without knowing how to use the standard command line tools (hint: this person is an upperclassman, and I know for a fact that this topic is gone over extensively in a required introductory Unix class)?
    2. Not every student has Windows at home (I, for example, switch between Ubuntu and OpenIndiana).
    3. Requiring not only Visual Studio, but a specific version of it (we were explicitly requested not to use VS 2013, because the grader apparently doesn't have it). 

    I am starting to remember why I hated university so much the first time round.



  • Out of curiosity, what exactly would the grader do with the (assumedly *nix) makefile, on his windows machine? Is the makefile a .bat or .ps1 script? Because, if it is, I'd say that is TRWTF…


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

     WTFs to come:

    1) You will be docked marks because your VS was set to put in tabs as indents, but the marker expected spaces as indents. Auto-reformatting. What? Huh?

    2) Your screen is 1920x1080. The marker's screen is 800x600. You are deducted marks because your code is "unreadable" because it goes off the screen

    3)  This has made me too sad to think of a third joke. {whiskeysob}


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I don't see anything wrong with a class requiring a standard way to turn in homework. I wasn't CS, but I had to take CS 101, and it was all in Pascal, so things were a bit simpler. Is VS2012 something that's standard in the computer labs or something? Requiring a particular version that students don't necessarily have is definitely a WTF.

    How are you planning to do your assignments?



  • No, this is priceless life experience that you have the privilege of receiving before you get involved in your first tech job out in the real world.

    1. Your job is, among other things, to make things simpler for your bosses. If there are any tedious extra steps involved in making your work easy for them to understand, the responsibility falls upon you to help them understand that you're doing a good job. If you don't, you get bad marks for your performance and have only yourself to blame.
    2. There are perfectly good computers provided for you to use. Use them. If this requires that you stay late, oh well. Don't expect any extra credit for putting in the longer hours, and don't expect anyone to bend over backward to permit you to work from home or support whatever bizarre combination of hardware and software that you're using there.
    3. Refer to points 1 and 2.


  • MonoDevelop (or Xamarin Studio) actually uses out VS2010 project files and runs on any linux flavor that runs mono.



  • @anotherusername said:

    No, this is priceless life experience that you have the privilege of receiving before you get involved in your first tech job out in the real world.

  • Refer to points 1 and 2.
  • This. Make suggestions where you can, and be thankful when they can be implemented. Welcome to Real World 101.

    I have applications at work that were created in VS2005, Sql Server 2005, VB.net 1.1... With only minor changes needed occasionally there is no reason to upgrade thus these programs require all the associated fluff. They are a minor part of my job, but they still exist and can't be worked around unless a damn good reason (aka: money) can be had to spend time on upgrading and retooling.

    I use the tools available, during the allotted time to complete the designated tasks. Sometimes I have freedom to use C#, VS2013, Sql Server 2012, etc... Sometimes I have to duck, stay low and do what it takes with the provided code/tools/rules.



  • @ltouroumov said:

    MonoDevelop (or Xamarin Studio) actually uses out VS2010 project files and runs on any linux flavor that runs mono.

    It should also be worth noting... that VS2010, VS2012 and VS2013 "sln" files are mainly compatible: VS 2013 round tripping or New Feature: Compability. I've yet to have any issues doing VS2013... then loading the same solution in VS2010.

    The Information Age
    Visual Studio 2012 changes the game. You can now create projects in Visual Studio 2010 with Service Pack 1 then open those projects in Visual Studio 2012 and THEN open the project up again in VS2010 SP1. This works the other way, too! You can create projects in VS2012 (targeting Framework version 4 or less) then open the project in VS2010 SP1 and THEN open it up in VS2012 again. In other words, we now have project round-tripping capability so you can work with the latest features but still keep the solution compatible with team members using an older version of Visual Studio.


  • I really don't see the big problem here. The problem isn't really that the grader can't get your shit working in whatever random form you send it in. It's that in a class of 100+ people, having to have him dick around for an hour reformatting and recompiling shit for every single person who decides to follow their own individual and indeosyncratic format is a massive waste of time. That he prefers to run VS2012 in Windows 7 is just as valid as you prefering to run gcc in Ubuntu. And since he's the one handing out grades, you'd better make his job easier so he's in a better mood.



  • @Clueless_Luser said:

    Why is this person allowed to help grade computer-science homework without knowing how to use the standard command line tools (hint: this person is an upperclassman, and I know for a fact that this topic is gone over extensively in a required introductory Unix class)?

    I program for a living, and I consider myself practically incapable of using command-line tools. Standard or no.

    @Clueless_Luser said:

    (I, for example, switch between Ubuntu and OpenIndiana).

    Srsly? Linux alone, hell DESKTOP Linux, wasn't obscure enough for you? You had to pick a distro literally* nobody has ever heard of, just to be that one asshole who makes a nuisance of himself in every class?

    @Clueless_Luser said:

    Requiring not only Visual Studio, but a specific version of it (we were explicitly requested not to use VS 2013, because the grader apparently doesn't have it).

    Which the class provides, yes? So what's the big deal? Suck it up.

    *) Not literally



  • @Snooder said:

    I really don't see the big problem here. The problem isn't really that the grader can't get your shit working in whatever random form you send it in. It's that in a class of 100+ people, having to have him dick around for an hour reformatting and recompiling shit for every single person who decides to follow their own individual and indeosyncratic format is a massive waste of time. That he prefers to run VS2012 in Windows 7 is just as valid as you prefering to run gcc in Ubuntu. And since he's the one handing out grades, you'd better make his job easier so he's in a better mood.
     

    This, of course, is the real reason.  I only have 20ish CS students, but if everyone does whatever they feel like when submitting homework for my class, grading takes three times as long.  A college course big enough to require a separate grader is much worse.  Thus every project has very explicit submission rules; assignments submitted without following the rules are downgraded or, more likely, not graded.  It's not that the grader can't figure it out - i's that expecting each student to take x extra minutes to convert the assignment to a standard format and submit it saves the grader at least (2 * x * number of students in class) minutes sorting out everyone's assignment.

    If you're writing ANSI C++, like you will be for an introductory data structures class, you should be able to write in gcc and then build your source in VS2012 without any changes anyway.

     



  • @anotherusername said:

    There are perfectly good computers provided for you to use.

    At every university I studied, you would pretty much automagically get an MSDNAA / Dreamspark subscription; which, among a lot of other stuff, gets you a free copy of every version of Windows and Visual Studio imaginable*. And this was in Europe: I would assume universities in the states also get their students free copies of Visual Studio if and when they need them. Especially if there are Computer Science courses being taught.

    Of course, the first C++ course I took did expect all students to use GCC, and also required us to print out our source-code and place it in the teachers' mailbox. We even got exam questions about compiler command line arguments. Never used those again in my life.

    * Not applicable for people with a particularly large imagination.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I program for a living, and I consider myself practically incapable of using command-line tools.
    I consider you as just another code monkey then.

    And OpenIndiana is not "a distro", which is commonly used to indicate some Linux variant, no, it's based on (brace yourself) a version of OpenSolaris.

     



  • @TGV said:

    I consider you as just another code monkey then.

    Fortunately for me, I don't give a fuck what you think. Many companies think my time is worth six figures, and that's a lot more meaningful.



  • @TGV said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    I program for a living, and I consider myself practically incapable of using command-line tools.
    I consider you as just another code monkey then.

    And OpenIndiana is not "a distro", which is commonly used to indicate some Linux variant, no, it's based on (brace yourself) a version of OpenSolaris.


    You know, most of the time when I talk to people in this industry, I'm glad I quit the whole law thing. Most people are intelligent and passionate about technology and other things I'm interested in without being hyper-competitive jackasses or status-obsessed assholes.

    But then sometimes I run into the sort of myopic, socially unaware bullshit that reminds me why I didn't really want to be a programmer for a living in the first place. Because way, way too many of us just never seemed to figure when it's time to stop being pedantic about petty fucking bullshit. No, it's doesn't fucking matter that "OpenIndiana" isn't a "distro" or that *nix is different from Linux. It's the same fucking shit, and the same point applies.

     



  • @Snooder said:

    being pedantic about petty fucking bullshit

    Welcome to





    Enjoy your stay!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @TGV said:
    I consider you as just another code monkey then.

    Fortunately for me, I don't give a fuck what you think. Many companies think my time is worth six figures, and that's a lot more meaningful.

    You're only supposed to count the digits before the decimal, Blakey…



  • @FragFrog said:

    At every university I studied, you would pretty much automagically get an MSDNAA / Dreamspark subscription; which, among a lot of other stuff, gets you a free copy of every version of Windows and Visual Studio imaginable*. And this was in Europe: I would assume universities in the states also get their students free copies of Visual Studio if and when they need them. Especially if there are Computer Science courses being taught.

    Yes, but beside that they provide computer labs which have all the software installed already (and which they automagically charge you for when you sign up for a CS class, whether you use them or not). So if you don't want to spend your first 3 hours downloading and installing Visual Studio, you can sit down at a lab computer and have Hello World banged out, sent in, and maybe even graded in the same length of time.

    *Visual Studio was free through the MSDNAA; I believe Windows was heavily discounted, like $15 for a copy.



  •  To those who have stated this isn't a WTF, I must respectfully disagree, and here's why:

    1. I'm well aware that day jobs will frequently mandate painful, obtuse and/or suboptimal development environments (in fact, I've worked at places that did this).  However, in this case, I'm not a paid employee, but rather a paying customer, and as such, I feel I should be able to request platform-agnosticism and get it.
    2. Part of the point of teaching a class that uses ANSI C++ should be stressing portability (and we've already been told to use something entirely non-portable for an upcoming assignment, and to stay away from cross-platform 3rd-party libraries ~cringe~).
    3. The command-line tools of which I speak are cross-platform and have been ported to Windows (and work quite nicely - MinGW is awesome); in addition, they're widely used for non-desktop-PC target devices, so not exposing the students to them early on is, in my opinion, doing them a disservice.
    4. As I stated before, I believe that if one is going to grade CS homework, one really should understand how to use the standard command line tools as they really do represent a least-common denominator between disparate machine types.

    What I'm hearing from the professor is the equivalent of saying that an essay is illegible, not because the glyphs can't be read and understood, but because it got printed onto A4 instead of US Letter.



  • @Clueless_Luser said:

    The command-line tools of which I speak are cross-platform and have been ported to Windows (and work quite nicely - MinGW is awesome); in addition, they're widely used for non-desktop-PC target devices, so not exposing the students to them early on is, in my opinion, doing them a disservice.

    The CLI tools are completely inaccessible. That's like saying Stephen Hawking shouldn't be allowed to teach because he can't hold a piece of chalk. Fuck that logic.

    The class is teaching *programming*. The only criteria is that the student can successfully write the program. It doesn't matter what tools the student uses to do that, and in the interest of making the class available to the widest assortment of students that *should* 100% be using a good IDE, one that supports every accessibility feature of the OS, to teach the class and you should be fucking cheering them on.

    Then you should go back to your LUG or whatever and say, "hey guys, what's Linux's approach towards accessibility?" and when they say, "fuck the disabled!" (which they will, but probably using a lot more words than that) you should feel extremely ashamed.

    @Clueless_Luser said:

    As I stated before, I believe that if one is going to grade CS homework, one really should understand how to use the standard command line tools as they really do represent a least-common denominator between disparate machine types.

    If the machine type doesn't have a decent IDE with accessibility features, then it's not worth writing software for.



  • @Clueless_Luser said:

    I'm well aware that day jobs will frequently mandate painful, obtuse and/or suboptimal development environments (in fact, I've worked at places that did this).  However, in this case, I'm not a paid employee, but rather a paying customer, and as such, I feel I should be able to request platform-agnosticism and get it.

    I am a paying customer, therefore I feel I should be able to request that they just give me a passing grade and get it.

    @Clueless_Luser said:

    Part of the point of teaching a class that uses ANSI C++ should be stressing portability

    Why?

    @Clueless_Luser said:

    The command-line tools of which I speak are cross-platform and have been ported to Windows (and work quite nicely - MinGW is awesome); in addition, they're widely used for non-desktop-PC target devices, so not exposing the students to them early on is, in my opinion, doing them a disservice.

    Bird flu has been ported to humans. That doesn't mean it's good.
    Also not exposing students to good IDEs early on is, in my opinion, doing them a disservice.

    @Clueless_Luser said:

    As I stated before, I believe that if one is going to grade CS homework, one really should understand how to use the standard command line tools as they really do represent a least-common denominator between disparate machine types.

    Java represents a least-common denominator between disparate machine types as well.
    Why are you not arguing for Java instead?



  • @Clueless_Luser said:

    I'm well aware that day jobs will frequently mandate painful, obtuse and/or suboptimal development environments (in fact, I've worked at places that did this).  However, in this case, I'm not a paid employee, but rather a paying customer, and as such, I feel I should be able to request platform-agnosticism and get it.

    Sorry, paying tuition doesn't mean you get any input on the syllabus.  You can of course suggest things to your professor, but he is under no obligation to include them.

    Just curious: how many students are in your course?  Do you expect your professor to cater to every student's whims and wants?

     

    @Clueless_Luser said:

    As I stated before, I believe that if one is going to grade CS homework, one really should understand how to use the standard command line tools as they really do represent a least-common denominator between disparate machine types.
     

    And I believe that if one is going to do CS homework, then one should make life as simple as possible for the grader.  Despite what your professor said, you don't necessarily know that the grader can't use command-line tools; you only know that they aren't using them for the purposes of this course.  Again, expecting the grader to sort out X disparate submissions, where X is the number of students in the class, is unreasonable.  Graders don't get paid enough to deal with that kind of crap.

    Have you ever been a grader or an instructor for a computer science class?  Try thinking about the problem from their perspective rather than only your own.

     



  • @Clueless_Luser said:

    I've just had a professor tell me that he needs to have all work handed in in a Visual Studio 2012 project because his grader doesn't know what to do with makefiles; it should be noted that the class is an introductory data structure class, rather than something that is Windows-centric or actually needs Visual Studio to be taught.

    Maybe I have this all wrong, but I count at least three WTFs here:

    1. Why is this person allowed to help grade computer-science homework without knowing how to use the standard command line tools (hint: this person is an upperclassman, and I know for a fact that this topic is gone over extensively in a required introductory Unix class)?
    2. Not every student has Windows at home (I, for example, switch between Ubuntu and OpenIndiana).
    3. Requiring not only Visual Studio, but a specific version of it (we were explicitly requested not to use VS 2013, because the grader apparently doesn't have it). 

    I am starting to remember why I hated university so much the first time round.

    So, since that person is an upperclassman, s/he should be bother to have (or be bothered to install) every flavor of every build tool imaginable? If the course requires you to use specific tools, you use them. For example, for one course we've been forced to use AMD CodeAnalyst (and its CPU-specific features), even though 70% of us don't have an AMD processor. Next project requires CUDA. Last semester, we had a project in which we were forced to write in Turbo C (!) under DOS (!!) to directly drive an LPT port (!!!). And we shut up and did it.

    When somebody requests some standardized way to sobmit your work, it might not be because they're clueless - it might be simply that they don't give a fuck about you being a beautiful and unique snowflake. They have hundreds of students, and if everybody did things their own way, it would be a clusterfuck.

    So whenever you think that the grader should just shut up and accept your homework, remember 2 things:

    1. One day, you might be the grader

    2. There are still people who use Turbo C



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    Last semester, we had a project in which we were forced to [use] DOS

    That is cruel and unusual. Last semester you were forced to use an OS from over 30 years ago? And an IDE that was discontinued over 20 years ago?



  • @Clueless_Luser said:

    What I'm hearing from the professor is the equivalent of saying that an essay is illegible, not because the glyphs can't be read and understood, but because it got printed onto A4 instead of US Letter.

    What I'm hearing is that the professor is asking for essays to be submitted as a Word 2010 document and you're complaining because you can't submit it as WordPerfect or WordStar or OpenOffice or Emacs or...



  • @RTapeLoadingError said:

    @Clueless_Luser said:
    What I'm hearing from the professor is the equivalent of saying that an essay is illegible, not because the glyphs can't be read and understood, but because it got printed onto A4 instead of US Letter.

    What I'm hearing is that the professor is asking for essays to be submitted as a Word 2010 document and you're complaining because you can't submit it as WordPerfect or WordStar or OpenOffice or Emacs or...

    Wait...

    Essays?

    In Word documents?

    What are you, some kind of animal?



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Maciejasjmj said:
    Last semester, we had a project in which we were forced to [use] DOS

    That is cruel and unusual. Last semester you were forced to use an OS from over 30 years ago? And an IDE that was discontinued over 20 years ago?

    I did my first uni programming course in qbasic. Of course this was 1998 so it was still sort of supported.

    That was the engineering department. When I changed to IT in 2002 we could telnet (yes, telnet) into a red hat box to use gcc, but there were two red hat labs if we needed them.

    Edit because chrome android does not like the tag box: at least I didn't do business programming: they still taught Cobol!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Fortunately for me, I don't give a fuck what you think.
    Words of wisdom.



  • @Snooder said:

    But then sometimes I run into the sort of myopic, socially unaware bullshit that reminds me why I didn't really want to be a programmer for a living in the first place. Because way, way too many of us just never seemed to figure when it's time to stop being pedantic about petty fucking bullshit. No, it's doesn't fucking matter that "OpenIndiana" isn't a "distro" or that *nix is different from Linux. It's the same fucking shit, and the same point applies.

    You know, for me it's the problem that social retards can't see how ironic their complaints are.

     



  • I've been employed as a programmer for a few years, but I am attending university right now to get my bachelor's. I too use linux at home, and my wife uses Mac, so I've run into the everyone-else-uses-windows problems plenty. I find ways around it. LibreOffice saves in microsoft format just fine (although MS Office can view and edit open document format, many teachers don't know what to do with the files). Java was of course no problem. I did my C in CLI and eclipse. C# and visual basic, I ended up having to make some space and dual boot windows (virtual machines are annoying), and I was able to get Windows and Visual Studio for free through the school.

    @blakeyrat said:

    If the machine type doesn't have a decent IDE with accessibility features, then it's not worth writing software for.

    Ubuntu and its derivatives offer fairly decent accessibility features. And there are IDEs that work great - I use VS at work for C# and eclipse for Java at home, and I find eclipse to work just as well for me as VS. I do still work faster on the command line, however.


  • @Snooder said:

    I really don't see the big problem here. The problem isn't really that the grader can't get your shit working in whatever random form you send it in. It's that in a class of 100+ people, having to have him dick around for an hour reformatting and recompiling shit for every single person who decides to follow their own individual and indeosyncratic format is a massive waste of time. That he prefers to run VS2012 in Windows 7 is just as valid as you prefering to run gcc in Ubuntu. And since he's the one handing out grades, you'd better make his job easier so he's in a better mood.

     

     Well a standard format is acceptable but the according software should be easily and freely available to student. So choosing something Java based like netbeans or eclipse would make more sense.


     

     



  • @Clueless_Luser said:

    What I'm hearing from the professor is the equivalent of saying that an essay is illegible, not because the glyphs can't be read and understood, but because it got printed onto A4 instead of US Letter.



    I took a class once where people actually failed because they turned in an assignment with the standard 1 inch margins rather than the custom 3/4 inch margins required. Printing it on A4 would probably have resulted in the student being expelled.

    I am really, really not even kidding about this. The margins actually got checked.

     


  • BINNED

    @DrakeSmith said:

    I've been employed as a programmer for a few years, but I am attending university right now to get my bachelor's. I too use linux at home, and my wife uses Mac, so I've run into the everyone-else-uses-windows problems plenty. I find ways around it. LibreOffice saves in microsoft format just fine (although MS Office can view and edit open document format, many teachers don't know what to do with the files). Java was of course no problem. I did my C in CLI and eclipse. C# and visual basic, I ended up having to make some space and dual boot windows (virtual machines are annoying), and I was able to get Windows and Visual Studio for free through the school.

    @blakeyrat said:

    If the machine type doesn't have a decent IDE with accessibility features, then it's not worth writing software for.

    Ubuntu and its derivatives offer fairly decent accessibility features. And there are IDEs that work great - I use VS at work for C# and eclipse for Java at home, and I find eclipse to work just as well for me as VS. I do still work faster on the command line, however.
    It's a waste of time arguing with blakeyrat about usability. He's already admitted here that what he's OK with usability fails as long as his own personal preferences are met.

  • BINNED

    @Clueless_Luser said:

    Part of the point of teaching a class that uses ANSI C++ should be stressing portability

    ROFL



  • @Buttembly Coder said:

    Out of curiosity, what exactly would the grader do with the (assumedly *nix) makefile, on his windows machine? Is the makefile a .bat or .ps1 script? Because, if it is, I'd say that is TRWTF…

    Not an expert, but as far as I know, makefile is a .makefile script, basic format should be the same for win and *nix, except for the standard stuff like line endings and maybe paths (which if they're relative, there should be no problem anyway?)



  • @SEMI-HYBRID code said:

    @Buttembly Coder said:
    Out of curiosity, what exactly would the grader do with the (assumedly *nix) makefile, on his windows machine? Is the makefile a .bat or .ps1 script? Because, if it is, I'd say that is TRWTF…

    Not an expert, but as far as I know, makefile is a .makefile script, basic format should be the same for win and *nix, except for the standard stuff like line endings and maybe paths (which if they're relative, there should be no problem anyway?)

    It's usually named Makefile with a capital M and no file extension.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @SEMI-HYBRID code said:

    @Buttembly Coder said:
    Out of curiosity, what exactly would the grader do with the (assumedly *nix) makefile, on his windows machine? Is the makefile a .bat or .ps1 script? Because, if it is, I'd say that is TRWTF…

    Not an expert, but as far as I know, makefile is a .makefile script, basic format should be the same for win and *nix, except for the standard stuff like line endings and maybe paths (which if they're relative, there should be no problem anyway?)

    Basically, yes. There different dialects of make, of course. I've used GNU, BSD, nmake (a MS tool) and wmake (Watcom/OpenWatcom). I'm sure there are more. They all have similarities and differences.



  •  @Ben L. said:

    It's usually named Makefile with a capital M and no file extension.


    Oh there we are again, that sort of myopic, socially unaware bullshit that reminds me why I didn't really want to be a programmer for a living in the first place. It seems you never seemed to figure when it's time to stop being pedantic about petty fucking bullshit. No, it's doesn't fucking matter that "Makefile" isn't the same as ".makefile" or that a "C" is different from a "C++". It's the same fucking shit, and the same point applies.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @anonymous234 said:

    @Ben L. said:
    It's usually named Makefile with a capital M and no file extension.


    Oh there we are again, that sort of myopic, socially
    unaware bullshit that reminds me why I didn't really want to be a
    programmer for a living in the first place. It seems you never seemed to figure when it's time to stop being pedantic
    about petty fucking bullshit.

    Like when someone asks a question? Why are you such an asshole?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @anonymous234 said:

    No, it's doesn't fucking matter that "Makefile" isn't the same as ".makefile"
    Erm - isn't this sort of thing the reason this thread started in the first place? Because they aren't, in fact, the same, and it does in fact matter?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @PJH said:

    @anonymous234 said:
    No, it's doesn't fucking matter that "Makefile" isn't the same as ".makefile"
    Erm - isn't this sort of thing the reason this thread started in the first place? Because they aren't, in fact, the same?

    They should have just let everyone do their assignments in Excel. What else does anyone need?



  • @anonymous234 said:

     @Ben L. said:

    It's usually named Makefile with a capital M and no file extension.


    Oh there we are again, that sort of myopic, socially unaware bullshit that reminds me why I didn't really want to be a programmer for a living in the first place. It seems you never seemed to figure when it's time to stop being pedantic about petty fucking bullshit. No, it's doesn't fucking matter that "Makefile" isn't the same as ".makefile" or that a "C" is different from a "C++". It's the same fucking shit, and the same point applies.



    I know you think you're being clever right there, but if you can't understand why the two statements are different, then you are demonstrating the same lack of social awareness I was talking about. See, the original guy I replied to decided on his own, without any prompting, to interrupt a conversation about the reasonableness of requiring standards for handing in academic assignments to pontificate about the differences between Linux and Unix in a mildly smug tone. The was not only irrelevant, but (due to the smugness) quite irritating. Ben's post on the other hand is quite relevant to the conversation about the slight differences and details of makefile format. In addition, since the person who posted originally mentioned that he was not an expert, he invited any necessary correction to the information he provided. Thus, Ben's post was neither smug nor irrelevant.

    Social awareness means being able to see the cues in the conversation flow and refrain from correcting people, even if they are wrong, when correcting them is neither needed nor asked for.

     



  • Why would the ta need to run the code?

    It might be because i went to an univercity with focus on theory, but why would the grader need to run the software at all? I meen it's a a data structure course, so in order to do any usefull grading he would need to read the source code. What possible information could you get from running the software?

    Oh, And I do think that eclipse+cdt is a better development environment for doing c++ development then Visual studio 2012 but that is for an other flamewar I guess.

     



  • @mt@ilovefactory.com said:

    It might be because i went to an univercity with focus on theory, but why would the grader need to run the software at all? I meen it's a a data structure course, so in order to do any usefull grading he would need to read the source code. What possible information could you get from running the software?

    Oh, And I do think that eclipse+cdt is a better development environment for doing c++ development then Visual studio 2012 but that is for an other flamewar I guess.



    I went to a pretty theory focused school myself and we still turned in code, especially in the introductory courses. A lof of the intro profs made "does your code compile and run" an integral part of passing any assignment. I presume because it saved them having to grade something that is so broken it doesn't even run at all.

     



  • @mt@ilovefactory.com said:

    It might be because i went to an univercity with focus on theory, but why would the grader need to run the software at all? I meen it's a a data structure course, so in order to do any usefull grading he would need to read the source code. What possible information could you get from running the software?
    Ah, good ol' paper and pen programming. Who needs to actually RUN the program if you've already tested it on paper?



  • @inori said:

    If you're writing ANSI C++, like you will be for an introductory data structures class, you should be able to write in gcc and then build your source in VS2012 without any changes anyway.

    It's 2014. You should be expected to send an ideone link. Seriously. Why fuck about with visual studio and whatever. Anyone can develop however they want, eventually paste into ideone and be done.



  • @Kuba said:

    Anyone can develop however they want

    Yes, and that is one of the reasons that most software is a piece of shit

    @anotherusername said:

    Who needs to actually RUN the program if you've already tested it on paper?

    Ha, I remember when I started uni, we used pen and paper for everything including tests, (computers were a luxury back then and copy&paste was not a thing). The tests lasted 6 hours and you came out of them extremely depleted. Nowadays they break it out into 2 tests: theory and practice, much nicer.



  • @Snooder said:



    I know you think you're being clever right there, but if you can't understand why the two statements are different, then you are demonstrating the same lack of social awareness I was talking about. See, the original guy I replied to decided on his own, without any prompting, to interrupt a conversation about the reasonableness of requiring standards for handing in academic assignments to pontificate about the differences between Linux and Unix in a mildly smug tone. The was not only irrelevant, but (due to the smugness) quite irritating.

    Social awareness means being able to see the cues in the conversation flow and refrain from correcting people, even if they are wrong, when correcting them is neither needed nor asked for.

     

    Except he didn't do any of that, and your overreaction was much worse.

    He added literally one sentence, ONE, after his comment (not "interrupting a conversation"), that basically said "and it's not Linux btw, it's OpenSolaris" (which are about as different as C and C++). He didn't interrupt anybody to add a long explanation on why using "Consumer" is wrong because the software is not consumed when used, or some snarky comment about how Windows computers should be called "WCs", like R.M.S. does.



  • The real WTFs here: (and I'm surprised no one has mentioned either of them yet)

    Why does anyone even care about makefiles/project files for homework-grade projects?  In my CS classes, we turned in code.  Makefiles aren't even necessary until you hit a certain degree of complexity that's well beyond anything you're going to do in college.

    The C++ classes I was unfortunate enough to have to take were kind of the opposite of yours: everything was required to compile and run properly in GCC on Linux.  But I did all my coding in Visual Studio for one very simple reason: it had a real debugger.  That alone made me one of the most productive students in the entire class, and I'm finding it difficult to understand why you would want to use the GCC toolchain when something superior is not only available but explicitly preferred for your class!



  • @anonymous234 said:

    R.M.S.

    God. I actually started reading that link until I started to feel lice in my beard.


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