The very first text editor 3678

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Yeah. I guess my standards, when I was on the student side of this transaction, were a little higher, so I don't quite get it. Sort of a :-), sort of not.

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Well ....

Someone who has pbutted an introductory programming course should certainly be able to write simple programs that compile and execute properly, in at least one language.

That doesn't guarantee, however, that more complicated programs they write will also compile and execute properly. They *should* have acquired the skills they need to debug more complicated programs, but I can sort of imagine someone who can do this with the simple programs used in a first course but be unable to apply these skills to arbitrarily complicated programs.

If they're not able to do so, the right thing for them to do, IMO, is to communicate with the instructor (or some other designated person, such as a teaching buttistant) and ask for help or advice or something. I don't know how things operate in all schools, and probably there are some in which students are on their own outside clbutt, but others do make an effort to ensure that help is available for students who are having trouble with a clbutt. In the department where I teach, most of us make quite a point of announcing office hours and e-mail addresses and generally making it clear that students who are having trouble are welcome to come ask for individual help. Of course there's a limit to how much help one can provide to any one student (several hours a week of private tutoring wouldn't be possible), but reasonable requests are, IME, accommodated gladly. When I teach a programming course, I figure on spending at least a couple of hours a week, sometimes a lot more, in one of the department's computer labs helping students debug their code, and I figure on answering additional questions by e-mail. A bit more about this in a reply to Barb's post, I think.

I do think it's the student's responsibility to seek out this help, though, especially if it has been made clear that it's available. It's nice if an instructor says to a student "hey, you seem to be having trouble here, so why don't you come by my office sometime and let's try to straighten it out", but I don't think it should be expected. (What, the student can't figure out that his-her programs don't compile, and that that's a problem?)

Another important factor is the time element. I notice that your e-mail address ends ".uk" and you refer to the student's "tutor", so I'm guessing your experience is with UK schools, which are undoubtedly different from US schools, possibly in ways that matter to this discussion. Anyway ....

In US schools, buttignments for courses almost always come with deadlines, and there are well-defined penalties for not meeting them. Students have other demands on their time, too. So even someone who would be able to produce working code given enough time and effort and help from the instructor might not be willing and able to expend that much time and effort, and instructors, reasonably enough, aren't on call 24 hours a day to provide help, which can add delays to the process.

So I find it very easy to imagine circumstances in which someone who pbutted the first programming courses (and deserved to do so) would turn in code that doesn't even compile. The student's thinking might be "well, if I turn in nothing, I get zero points, whereas if I turn in what I have so far, I might get a few points."

I think one can make a case for the idea that code that doesn't even compile is such a poor effort that it deserves no credit. However, I think we'd all agree that one of the first steps in writing a program is to write *something*, and that once you have some code to give the compile, you have done *something* that's an essential step toward a complete and correct program. That's why I prefer to try to give *some* credit, even if not much, for code that doesn't compile.

Now we may be back at "YMMV".

-- B. L. Mbuttingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.