Thread: Must be final project time again....

I was going to suggest having a contest where we vote on the most pathetic request, but then I realized that it doesn't get much more pathetic than "Heres my assignment, I can has codez pls?" and there are already a few of those.

I was going to suggest an obfuscated answer as the prize to the winning post, something that performs as intended but would quite obviously be way beyond the skill of the poster, if the instructor could figure out how the program works...

Originally Posted by jdragyn

I was going to suggest an obfuscated answer as the prize to the winning post,

Yeah dude now that would be so cool!!!

Who cares -- y'all should give up programming and do what you really wanna do, police academy.

I finished with 3.7 GPA and never goofed off, but I never felt any animosity toward people who did poorly, whether it was their own fault or not. Pretty sure your bizarre sense of impropriety here is even more juvenile than the "problem" it seeks to "redress".

It's not animosity for people slacking off. That's their choice.

It's the fact that they are asking us to do their work.

Imagine a classmate asking you several times a semester to code his project. After several times of him asking you. You are going to be pretty frustrated with them.

Originally Posted by kermit

I just don't care for lazy people that much. The thought of helping a lazy person pass his course so he can get his diploma, and then move into the workplace so he can ask a co-worker to essentially do his work for him, that thought, is repulsive to me. Just imagine the lazy guy on a team - how he sucks the other team mates down because he didn't do any work.

I have zero respect for capitalist economics and the perverse "work ethic" it uses to brainwash weak minded suckers, fools, and cowards so they can believe they are something other than weak minded suckers fools and cowards. Laziness is it's own reward and it's own punishment. Being all concerned about the situation of someone on the other end of a thread in this regard just sounds to me like a bunch of nattering little old church ladies trying to preach morality when they are almost certainly the biggest hypocrits in town. (All apologizes to the little old church ladies for stereotyping, some of them are quite nice )

WRT to "doing homework", I wasn't suggesting that be cast aside or anything. And I do ignore posters according to my mood if they seem too disinterested in making an effort themselves.

But I would not waste time persecuting them either. Whatever turns you on I guess

Maybe a better approach would be to yell at the people who help the lazy people.

Originally Posted by kermit

I find it ironic that you would peg me as a hypocrite, when you know little, (if anything) other than what I have said here, about my work ethic.

I wasn't trying to insult anyone in particular, just to stifle the bandwagon before it turns into a real witch huntin' posse. All apologies.

It seems to me that many of these "problem students" could be people with genuine problems, conscious or unconscious, and that only someone who has lived an easy, untroubled, privileged life would jump to some other conclusion.* No doubt, some of them are just lazy good for nothings, but evaluating this in the context of a technical web forum is not possible or appropriate. And the innocent should not be lumped in with the guilty.

* which would actually make YOU the ingrate, tee-hee

It seems to me that many of these "problem students" could be people with genuine problems, conscious or unconscious, and that only someone who has lived an easy, untroubled, privileged life would jump to some other conclusion.*

I must confess I have no idea where you are going with this. It is a simple matter of we do not do homework for people and we do not dole out source code for anyone who has not shown some effort. You don't create posts that both violate the forum guidelines and are presumptious, rude, and ask everyone else to do your own work unless you are lazy and just want spoon fed answers.

We help thousands of legit students on here everyday and I say legit as in they put forth some effort and actually have done some work towards solving their particular problem. Solving a problem for someone that has no interest in the actual problem solving process and/or learning from it helps no one. Not sure where the answers you came up with relating to privileged people fit into the discussion or how it relates in anyway to helping out lazy individuals that I hope and pray do not land on my dev team some time in the future. In fact you seem to have a hang up or a pet peeve about this issue and it is my estimation that is clouding your assesment of the matter. Often I find people with such hangups usually make every issue somehow relate to that one hang-up or pet peeve that they have. This discussion is not about the privileged or the unprivileged or anything of the sort. Plain and simple it is about showing some effort. In fact you are making some broad assumptions about those posting in this thread that quite honestly are not fair given you do not know any of us well enough to come to any conclusions about our character or who we are.

So, in short when you have done some work and are geniuinely interested in learning you don't create the types of posts we are discussing in this thread. This forum is full of helpful members and I take offense at your claims to the contrary.

Originally Posted by MK27

I wasn't trying to insult anyone in particular, just to stifle the bandwagon before it turns into a real witch huntin' posse. All apologies.

It seems to me that many of these "problem students" could be people with genuine problems, conscious or unconscious, and that only someone who has lived an easy, untroubled, privileged life would jump to some other conclusion.* No doubt, some of them are just lazy good for nothings, but evaluating this in the context of a technical web forum is not possible or appropriate. And the innocent should not be lumped in with the guilty.

* which would actually make YOU the ingrate, tee-hee

C'mon MK; you know its lame when they post their final exam here and ask for help doing it...if that were cool it would make your 3.7 GPA worthless.
help about homework
Its worse when the OP gets obnoxious about it.

I have seen two of these in the past 24 hours...they don't even try to disguise the homework/exam, this just post it here and ask for the answers. I know I am not all politically minded like you are but I do have a sense of lame/not-lame. I guess having been a C++ instructor in the dank dark past makes me have a different perspective but I have always rewarded someone who is trying with help, guidance and more but when that person won't even put in the effort to try, screw 'em I say..I will put in as much effort into their problem as they have. When they are asking for help for free, they can expect no more. But often do.

Oh and I can assure you that I have not had an easy, privileged life; I got to where I am entirely on my own steam...and I still find the lazy gits lame...

Originally Posted by jeffcobb

C'mon MK; you know its lame when they post their final exam here and ask for help doing it...if that were cool it would make your 3.7 GPA worthless.

I agree with the first part, I don't see what it has to do with the second part.

The reason I spoke up is not because I think we should do homework for people or help them no matter how pathetic their own efforts. The reason I spoke up was because the second post in this thread was jdragyn suggesting that we make a policy of mocking and intentionally lying to such people outright. I do not see that as a discussion worth pursing, because what will happen is some people will get all excited by the opportunity to mock and deceive, and in the competitive rush to "post the coolest most obfuscated faux solution for these chumps", I guarantee the innocent will get lumped in with the guilty and the forum will deteriorate into something much more juvenile than people asking someone else to do their work for them.

I think it is sufficient to explain that we don't do this, and IMO there is not a problem in the forum here. I was right behind you (and three or four others) this morning telling rockyhwc that he was out of luck repeatedly posting his assignment without making an effort. That's fine. It also seems to work.

Perhaps I should have addressed jdragyn instead of referring to "y'all" but most likely if I hadn't said anything, this ball would have started to roll:

Originally Posted by jdragyn

I was going to suggest having a contest where we vote on the most pathetic request...

I was going to suggest an obfuscated answer as the prize to the winning post, something that performs as intended but would quite obviously be way beyond the skill of the poster, if the instructor could figure out how the program works...

since there has been some support for this idea here before. BAD CALL. While I agree these "lazy requests" are very frequent, almost everytime the offender gets the point by being told, so the number of cases in which something nastier happens/needs to happen is very small (anyone remember transgalactic? ). I'm sure the mods notice stuff like that and people can be Banned.

So, like I said earlier, I don't think there is a need to rush to judgement on people for the purpose of posting OBFUSCATED or INTENTIONALLY WRONG answers. I don't know if there is a policy against that, but there certainly should be. If you want to look clever doing these kinds of thing, take it somewhere else. Honestly. To be cliche: two wrongs do not make a right.

ps. having an "easy, privileged life" is not incompatible with getting somewhere "on your own steam". Just you will probably get further. No matter how you slice it, do not try and claim you are not, in fact, more privileged than many many people in the world. So am I -- I'm not putting you down. But there is a word for people who get all gleeful about gang-banging the weak: sadists.

I gotta think the thing about intentionally lying to the requester was just blowing off steam; most of us are in this game because of an underlying respect for truth which is the overall driving force behind all programming. This is just my perspective but I doubt any user on here would actually lie to the person begging for help and even if they did, Alex or someone would likely as not take it down. Yeah I have my sadistic side too and for a fleeting moment when I saw one of these lame-o requests for filling out their exam code I thought of the old Steve Martin routine about teaching a kid to talk wrong and then sending them to school. I snickered at the thought but that is as far as it went. I seriously doubt anyone would go further.

Re: privileged: No I was not raised in a mud hut or tortured as a child but I did not have the money for college so I joined the army which taught me low-level electronics which lead to a love of software development back in the early 80's and everything I know about it now is either self-taught or invented on my own. That is what I meant by my own steam. Having your family tell you that you are only good for factory work and that I should not try to better myself didn't help. The point is that it took (and in many ways continues to take) a lot of extra effort that most of these kids in college could never contend with so when one comes along that basically says "I screwed off all semester and now I have to have a working B-tree by monday and I don't know what a function is.." I am not inclined to help them. To have thrown away a chance I never had and then wanting to take credit for work that I did burns my rice.

There's nothing wrong with being lazy...as long as you don't expect someone else to do the work for you.

What really irks me, though, are the ones that don't even know the very *basics* of the language, and yet they want you to help them design a compiler or something!

Code:

void main()
{
	char s="". // <- how i make compiler wit thiis?!!!
}

Another thing I noticed (and I hope not to get flamed for this) is that the majority of these types of posts seem to be made by people from non-western countries. What's up with that, anyway?

Let's not COMPLETELY terrify the newbs...