error C2106: '=' : left operand must be l-value

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

Indentation should be taught. I object to the idea of "failing" students for bad indentation at beginning levels. Are we deliberately trying to discourage people from persevering?

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I approve to this idea. However, this is in regards to that indentation is taught as a part of class. If a student doesn't indent at all, and indentation was indeed a part of the class, then I would fail that one.
I wouldn't fail someone for having bad indentation, but for someone lacking it completely and utterly, I certainly would.

But this calls for another "indent automatically" features available in IDEs such as Visual Studio. Default indentation is better than nothing.

> And some people played the piano at age 2.

I seriously doubt that anyone who takes years to figure out that when writing code with several nesting levels, it helps to keep track of where one is, is ever going to be good at programming. Being sloppy like that is going to prevent success at any kind of complicated detail-oriented work.

> I object to the idea of "failing" students for bad indentation at beginning levels.

I agree with this. But for the reason above, I think if the students can't figure it out for themselves in a fairly short time, they'll do badly anyway.

I don't know if I'd straight out fail a student for bad (or no) indenting, but I'd definitely take a lot of marks off. I have to wonder though... if students don't indent at all, wouldn't that indicate a lack of proper indenting being taught in class?

I know different people have different personalities. Some people are very meticulous and precise about everything they do (which I think makes for really good QA and Developers), while others have the attention span of a turnip and do everything in a half ass way; and no amount of lecturing is going to change their core personality traits. The best we can do is teach them all the best practices, and explain why they should do something a certain way; then hope that the message sticks with most of the students.

I don't think a professor should take marks off for indenting, unless the student was being required to demonstrate a particular style of indenting as part of an assignment (and the most common styles should be taught at some point). But I think a prospective employer could reasonably assume that poorly indented code showed a lack of aptitude, and make a quick no-hire decision for that reason - similar to having a resume full of spelling and grammatical errors.

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Originally Posted by robatino

I don't think a professor should take marks off for indenting, unless the student was being required to demonstrate a particular style of indenting as part of an assignment (and the most common styles should be taught at some point). But I think a prospective employer could reasonably assume that poorly indented code showed a lack of aptitude, and make a quick no-hire decision for that reason - similar to having a resume full of spelling and grammatical errors.

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That's assuming the employer asks to see some code they've written before hiring them.
Why not teach them proper indenting sooner rather than later? Then they have less time to pick up bad habits. Code readability is just as important as functionality and therefore I would definitely take marks off for bad indenting; and if they're using a proper IDE, there's absolutely no excuse for incorrect indenting.

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Originally Posted by robatino

> And some people played the piano at age 2.

I seriously doubt that anyone who takes years to figure out that when writing code with several nesting levels, it helps to keep track of where one is, is ever going to be good at programming. Being sloppy like that is going to prevent success at any kind of complicated detail-oriented work.

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It didn't take me years to learn to indent. But it took over a decade to decide on a complete style, as well as a complete rationale for that style.

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I agree with this. But for the reason above, I think if the students can't figure it out for themselves in a fairly short time, they'll do badly anyway.

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This assumes that computer programming and computer science are somehow inextricably linked to indentation. There are plenty of languages where indentation is meaningless. It's a property of specific languages, not the concept of programming in general.

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Originally Posted by cpjust

That's assuming the employer asks to see some code they've written before hiring them.
Why not teach them proper indenting sooner rather than later? Then they have less time to pick up bad habits. Code readability is just as important as functionality and therefore I would definitely take marks off for bad indenting; and if they're using a proper IDE, there's absolutely no excuse for incorrect indenting.

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Indeed. I couldn't have phrased it better.
Code readability is absolutely important in today's market, so indentation should really be taught as a part of class. I mean, if you submit absolutely unindented code, how the heck is the professor supposed to read it!? If you've been taught indentation, there's absolutely no excuse for ignoring it and being part of the course, of course it will points of your final degree if you fail at it. And if there's no indentation at all, then you fail a part of the course completely and that hurts your degree a lot.

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Originally Posted by robatino

I don't think a professor should take marks off for indenting, unless the student was being required to demonstrate a particular style of indenting as part of an assignment (and the most common styles should be taught at some point). But I think a prospective employer could reasonably assume that poorly indented code showed a lack of aptitude, and make a quick no-hire decision for that reason - similar to having a resume full of spelling and grammatical errors.

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Actually, when I studied C in a Univerisity course some 15 or more years back, part of the lab-work score was based on proper style - it didn't HAVE to be as it was described in the university style guide, but it had to be consistently styled.

--
Mats

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This assumes that computer programming and computer science are somehow inextricably linked to indentation. There are plenty of languages where indentation is meaningless. It's a property of specific languages, not the concept of programming in general.

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I think that it is true that indentation is a property of specific languages (e.g., Python), a convention in others (e.g., C), and meaningless in yet others. On the other hand, whether as feature or as convention, indentation is linked to the idea of scope, and scope is an important concept in computer programming.

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Originally Posted by Elysia

Indeed. I couldn't have phrased it better.
Code readability is absolutely important in today's market, so indentation should really be taught as a part of class. I mean, if you submit absolutely unindented code, how the heck is the professor supposed to read it!? If you've been taught indentation, there's absolutely no excuse for ignoring it and being part of the course, of course it will points of your final degree if you fail at it. And if there's no indentation at all, then you fail a part of the course completely and that hurts your degree a lot.

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I think assignment code should always be submitted as actual source files, not as a printout. That way, the teacher can automatically indent the code in any desired style, not to mention being able to immediately compile and run it.

Of course it should be submitted as source files, but would you want to sit there indenting all the code from your students because they didn't indent at all?

Thank you all for the replies and good advices.They have been very useful.

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Originally Posted by Elysia

Of course it should be submitted as source files, but would you want to sit there indenting all the code from your students because they didn't indent at all?

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That's one of the reasons I'd take marks off. If I have to fix their indenting, they're wasting my time, and considering most teachers have dozens or possibly hundreds of students in all their classes, they can't afford to waste too much time when grading assignments.

I understand the importance of indentation. And completely agree with Laserlight.
but...

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Originally Posted by Elysia

Of course it should be submitted as source files, but would you want to sit there indenting all the code from your students because they didn't indent at all?

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As far as I know ... now a days the program does it for you. just with one click!. (for example XCode ) :D
lol.

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Originally Posted by nacho4d

As far as I know ... now a days the program does it for you. just with one click!. (for example XCode ) :D
lol.

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And thank goodness for that! We don't have to manually indent poor indented source :)
But that doesn't mean you should get away with not indenting properly... especially since it causes bugs!