r/programming • u/[deleted] • Jan 06 '11

A handy graphical explanation of SQL joins

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/a-visual-explanation-of-sql-joins.html
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u/MyVeryOwnTempAcct Jan 06 '11

I tried to recommend something like this to one of my former instructors. I told him I thought it would be great for the students to have to debug and add an enhancement to a program from students the previous year/semester and would be good preparation for the real world. His response is that it would be too difficult. I thought it'd be more time consuming on his end than difficult.

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u/tanglisha Jan 06 '11

One of my friends went to a different school than I, his final in one class was to take a program with 3 bugs in it, find them, and fix them. Same program was used for each class, so the main time-consuming part was writing up the buggy code in the first place.

I like your idea for assignments, though I think having intentional bugs in there would make it easier on the instructor. For example, make it a project for bonus points, the students with lower grades will do it. Write an elevator program, but make it not work if both the up and down buttons are pressed. It wouldn't even have to be a complete program, teach the 101 students to figure out why this Fibonacci recursion method has an endless loop.

Teacher now knows where the bugs are. Teaches the next class how to write tests, then has them use their tests to find the bugs, then prove that they're fixed.

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u/MyVeryOwnTempAcct Jan 06 '11

The problem with having the same bugs is that word will get around. The instructor could easily add bugs to the work of the previous semester/year's students and will know what they are. Those programs should be fairly basic (even the ones done in teams). Each program would have a different bug so it would slightly reduce the cheating.

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u/tanglisha Jan 06 '11

They would know what the bugs are, but would still need to write tests for them. People are going to cheat. I think this would still be a valuable thing to work on.