print("x")is you want to screw your students.screw your students
ಠ_ಠ
“Dr. Prof. Mann, I really didn’t understand anything about UNIX on that last midterm. Can we go over how to
touchandfingerafter class?”
I think this is a good question and answer in the sense that it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the student - exactly what you hope an exam would do! (Except for how this seems to combine javascript’s .length and python’s print statement - maybe there is a language like this though - or ‘print’ was a javascript function defined elsewhere).
This reminds me once of when I was a TA in a computer science course in the computer lab. Students were working on a “connect 4” game - drop a token in a column, try to connect 4. A student asked me, while writing the drop function, if he would have to write code to ensure that the token “fell” to bottom of the board, or if the computer would understand what it was trying to do. Excellent question! Because the question connects to a huge misunderstanding that the answer has a chance to correct.
For reference the “language” used in the exam would probably be Exam Reference Language (OCR exam board specifically, which I believe this question is from) which is just fancier pseudocode.
Teaching complete “clean slates” is a great way to re-evaluate your understanding.
I’ve had to teach a few apprentices and while they were perfectly reasonable and bright people, they had absolutely no idea, how computers worked internally. It’s really hard to put yourself in the shoes of such persons if it’s been too long since you were at this point of ignorance.
I forget which one, but one of my flight instructor textbooks said “to teach is to learn twice.” And BOY HOWDY is that accurate.
You will find no better teacher of expert aeronautics than a brand new student. They will show you a new perspective, every single time.
Second this. I’m a teacher aid and I get to fix student’s code for students who are not technically inclined. It’s so much fun and I’ve learned so much McGuivering all that shitty mess together.
To add on to exam reference languages, this is valid ruby
It’s obviously:
Traceback (most recent call last): File “./main.py”, line 2, in AttributeError: ‘str’ object has no attribute ‘length’
Ah yes, all pseudocode is python
Ah yes, python is psuedocode
They missed out the context code:
trait DoW { def length: FiniteDuration } object Monday extends DoW { override def length = 24.hours } ... implicit def toDoW(s: String): DoW = s match { case "Monday" => Monday ... } var day: DoW = _(Duration formatting and language identification are left as an exercise for the reader)
The answer is 6. It’s 6 characters long.
Not really, no. That would be the answer if x= len(day). The code in the image would just throw an error.
Is it wrong that I’m stuck trying to figure out what language this is?
Trying to figure out what string.length and print(var) exist in a single language… Not Java, not C# (I’m pretty sure its .Length, not length), certainly not C, C++ or Python, Pascal, Schme or Haskell or Javascript or PHP.
That recurring puzzle is among the most interesting aspects of this community, IMHO.
I’m very much guessing that this is just supposed to be a type of pseudocode given the context and vagueness of it.
It’s a big reason why I really dont like pseudocode as instruction to people learning the basics of what programming is. It made more sense 20 years ago when programming languages were on a whole a lot more esoteric and less plain text, but now with simple languages like Python there’s simply little reason to not just write Python code or whatever.
I took an intro to programming class in College and the single thing I got dinged on the most is “incorrect pseudocode”, which was either too formal and close to real code or too casual and close to plain English.
It’s not a great system. We really need to get rid of it as a practice
Especially since python is right there.
I mean once you get beyond bash-like scripts python is esoteric as fuck, adding oop to what is essentially a shell is a terrible idea
That said, there’s plenty of languages with good syntax that is still good when you get into more complex stuff (modern C#, scala, kotlin and more)
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees here pretty heavily.
Yes, Python has some goofy aspects about managing it while performing high level, in depth tasks.
This is a post and a comment chain about pseudocode being taught to people who likely just learned what a “programming language” was several weeks ago. Essentially no one taking the GCSE knows what “bash-like scripts” even means.
I wonder if day length is given separately in a table prior to the question? I’m not sure what they wanted except maybe seconds?
It’s the length of the string. The number of characters is 6. It’s a play on words and a question.
I’m not really a fan of this kind of question. Especially if there’s enough questions that time will be an issue for most. Because at first glance it’s easy to think the answer might be the length of a day.
There shouldn’t be a need to try to trick people into the wrong answer on an open question. Maybe with multiple choice but not an open answer question.
I get your point about it being a trick question but I think in this case it’s pretty reasonable that you would see code like this in real life. Where the programming metaphor and your understanding of the real world clash. It’s a very important skill to be able to spot the difference.
The compiler or interpreter does that for you. There’s no point in these “gotcha’s”. They are cute brain teasers that belong on those useless “are you a programmer” quizzes you find on random meme websites, not an exam.
In the error shown a compiler would be just fine and run as usual but the person programming it would be expecting a different result so a compiler wouldn’t do this for you since it’s a logical error and not a syntax error.
If it’s a statically typed language and
xis of typeDate, it’s for sure throw a type error when trying to assign a string to it. If it had autoboxing / auto type conversion fromStringtoDate, length could return a number or a string.If this were Javascript on NodeJS, it would fail at
print(x)because that doesn’t exist in JS. If it were Python it would fail atx.lengthbecause that has to belen(x). And so on.If this were all to pass, at the latest at runtime, when the programmer sees the output “6”, they would know something’s up.
As I said, cute, but worthless test.
Most date libraries count to 23h 59m 59s then roll over to 00h 00m 00s. So the answer is 23 hours, not 24.
Edit: I’m big dum dum. It’s asking string length of “Monday”, thus 6.
Are they using a red pen to write the checkmarks for correct answers to make it confusing but logical at least?
Grading in red is generally avoided, nowadays. Red is closely associated with failure/danger/bad, and feedback should generally be constructive to help students learn and grow.
I usually like to grade in a bright colour that students are unlikely to pick: purple, green, pink, orange, or maybe light blue (if most students are working in pencil). Brown is poo. Black and dark blue are too common. Yellow is illegible. Red is aggressive.
Anyway, I’m guessing they just graded everything in green. The only time I’ve ever graded in more than one colour was when I needed to subgrade different categories of grades, like thinking/communication/knowledge/application. In that case, choosing a consistent colour for each category makes it easier to score.
The amount of people nitpicking about the brand of pseudocode or arguing the question is tricky reminds me of some coworkers, and not the good kind.
If you belong to the above category, try to learn some new programming language / read about some algorithm descriptions (not implementation) and go out take some sun. The question is super intuitive if you’re not stuck to a single paradigm or language.
